em suadent, quam tamen te inconsulto nolim fieri. Ad te venire
vix possum, nec est cur ad me venias. Licere vel non licere uno verbo
dicendum est; catera mihi et Holdero[450] reliqueris. Si per te licet,
imperatur[451] nuncio Holderum ad me deducere.

'Maiis Calendis, 1782.

'Postquam tu discesseris, quo me vertam[452]?'_

TO CAPTAIN LANGTON[453], IN ROCHESTER.

'DEAR SIR,

'It is now long since we saw one another; and whatever has been the
reason neither you have written to me, nor I to you. To let friendship
die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is
voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary
pilgrimage, of which when it is, as it must be, taken finally away, he
that travels on alone, will wonder how his esteem could be so little. Do
not forget me; you see that I do not forget you. It is pleasing in the
silence of solitude to think, that there is one at least, however
distant, of whose benevolence there is little doubt, and whom there is
yet hope of seeing again[454].

'Of my life, from the time we parted, the history is mournful. The
spring of last year deprived me of Thrale, a man whose eye for fifteen
years had scarcely been turned upon me but with respect or
tenderness[455]; for such another friend, the general course of human
things will not suffer man to hope. I passed the summer at Streatham,
but there was no Thrale; and having idled away the summer with a weakly
body and neglected mind, I made a journey to Staffordshire on the edge
of winter. The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends
sickly whom I went to see. After a sorrowful sojourn, I returned to a
habitation possessed for the present by two sick women, where my dear
old friend, Mr. Levett, to whom as he used to tell me, I owe your
acquaintance[456], died a few weeks ago, suddenly in his bed; there
passed not, I believe, a minute between health and death. At night, as
at Mrs. Thrale's I was musing in my chamber, I thought with uncommon
earnestness, that however I might alter my mode of life, or
whithersoever I might remove[457], I would endeavour to retain Levett
about me; in the morning my servant brought me word that Levett was
called to another state, a state for which, I think, he was not
unprepared, for he was very useful to the poor. How much soever I valued
him, I now wish that I had valued him more[458].

'I have myself been ill more than eight weeks of a disorder, from which