OLITIK GOLDSMITH S LIFE A!NT) TIMES. [BOOK II.
m& style, witli its simple air of authorship, is eminently good
and happy. The assumption of a kind of sturdy indepen-
dence, title playful admission of well-known faults, and the
incidental slight confession of sorrows, have graceful
relation to the person addressed, and the terms on which
they stood of old. His uncle was now in a hopeless state
of living death, from which, in a few months, the grave
released him; and to this the letter affectingly refers.
"TO MRS. JANE LAWDEB.
" If yea should ask, why in an interval of so many years, you never
" heard from me, permit me, madam, to ask the same question. I have
0€he best excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden
win Holland, from Louvain in Flanders, and Eouen in IPranee, but
^received no answer. To what could I attribute this silence but to dis-
tt pleasure or forgetfulness ? Whether I was right in my conjecture I
** do not pretend to determine ; but this I must ingenuously own, that I
Khave a thousand times in my turn endeavoured to forget them, whom
al could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have attempted to blot
" their names from my memory, and, I confess it, spent whole days in
* efforts to tear their image from my heart. Could I have succeeded,
" you had not now been troubled with this renewal of a discontinued
K correspondence; but, as every effort the restless make to procure
w sleep serves hut to keep them waking, all my attempts contributed to
a impress what I would forget deeper on my imagination. But this
* subject I would willingly tarn from, and yet, 'for the soul of me,' I
K can't till I have said all.
''"I was, madam, when I discontinued writing to ELilmore, in such
^WECWBftsteiaces, that aH my endeavours to continue your regards might
**'top ^fefeH?ited to wrong motives. My letters might be looked upon
K as ihe pefiteoma of a beggar, and not the offerings of a friend ; while
wall my professions, instead of being considered as the result of dis-
K interested esteejn, might he ascribed to venal insincerity. I believe
- TT iS
"indeed you had too much generosity to place them in such a light,
I muld i|oi be?oj even, the shadow of such a suspicion. The
delicate MendsMps are always most sensible of the slightest
* invasion, aad the strongest jealousy is ever attendant "on the warmest
" regard. I could not—I own I could not—continue a correspondence ;