LETTER XCII.
Dr. H. To James Harlowe senior, Esq;
London, Sept. 4.
Sir,
If I may judge of the hearts of other parents by my own, I cannot doubt but you will take it well to be informed, that you have yet an opportunity to save yourself and family great future regret, by dispatching hither some one of it, with your last Blessing, and your Lady's, to the most excellent of her Sex.
I have some reason to believe, Sir, that she has been represented to you in a very different light from the true one. And this it is that induces me to acquaint you, that I think her, on the best grounds, absolutely irreproachable in all her conduct which has passed under my eye, or come to my ear; and that her very misfortunes are made glorious to her, and honourable to all that are related to her, by the use she has made of them; and by the patience and resignation with which she supports herself in a painful, lingering, and dispiriting decay; and by the greatness of mind with which she views
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her approaching dissolution. And all this from proper motives; from motives in which a dying Saint might glory.
She knows not that I write. I must indeed acknowlege, that I offered to do so some days ago, and that very pressingly: Nor did she refuse me from obstinacy---She seems not to know what that is---But desired me to forbear for two days only, in hopes that her newly-arrived Cousin, who, as she heard, was soliciting for her, would be able to succeed in her favour.
I hope I shall not be thought an officious man on this occasion: But if I am, I cannot help it; being driven to write, by a kind of parental and irresistible impulse.
But, Sir, whatever you think fit to do, or permit to be done, must be speedily done; for she cannot, I verily think, live a week: And how long of that short space she may enjoy her admirable intellects to take comfort in the favours you may think proper to confer upon her, cannot be said. I am, Sir,
Your most humble Servant,
R. H.