grippina was told of her son's death, Tacitus informs us, that,
not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly
broke off her work--My father stuck his compasses into Nevers, but
so much the faster.--What contrarieties! his, indeed, was matter of
calculation!--Agrippina's must have been quite a different affair; who
else could pretend to reason from history?

How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.--

Chapter 3.III.

...--And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too--so look to
yourselves.

'Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or Epictetus,
or Theophrastus, or Lucian--or some one perhaps of later date--either
Cardan, or Budaeus, or Petrarch, or Stella--or possibly it may be some
divine or father of the church, St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Barnard,
who affirms that it is an irresistible and natural passion to weep for
the loss of our friends or children--and Seneca (I'm positive) tells us
somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular
channel--And accordingly we find, that David wept for his son
Absalom--Adrian for his Antinous--Niobe for her children, and that
Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from
most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the
Hebrews and the Romans--or slept it off, as the Laplanders--or hanged
it, as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans,--nor did he curse it,
or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lillabullero it.--

--He got rid of it, however.

Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these two
pages?

When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid it
to his heart,--he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his
own unto it.--O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!--still, still,
still,--'twas O my Tullia!--my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear
my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia.--But as soon as he began to look into
the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might
be said upon the occasion--no body upon earth can conceive, says the
great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me.

My father was as proud of his eloquence as Marcus Tullius Cicero could
be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary
at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his stren