t harass yourself into danger; you owe the care
of your health to all that love you, at least to all whom it is your
duty to love. You cannot give such a mother too much, if you do not give
her what belongs to another. I am, &c.

XIV.--To MRS. THRALE.

April 27, 1773.

DEAR MADAM,--Hope is more pleasing than fear, but not less fallacious;
you know, when you do not try to deceive yourself, that the disease,
which at last is to destroy, must be gradually growing worse, and that
it is vain to wish for more than, that the descent to death may be slow
and easy. In this wish I join with you, and hope it will be granted.
Dear, dear lady, whenever she is lost she will be missed, and whenever
she is remembered she will be lamented. Is it a good or an evil to me,
that she now loves me? It is surely a good; for you will love me better,
and we shall have a new principle of concord; and I shall be happier
with honest sorrow, than with sullen indifference: and far happier still
than with counterfeited sympathy.

I am reasoning upon a principle very far from certain, a confidence of
survivance. You or I, or both, may be called into the presence of the
supreme judge before her. I have lived a life of which I do not like the
review. Surely I shall, in time, live better.

I sat down with an intention to write high compliments; but my thoughts
have taken another course, and some other time must now serve to tell
you with what other emotions, benevolence, and fidelity, I am, &c.

XV.--To THE SAME.

May 17, 1773.

MADAM,--Never imagine that your letters are long; they are always too
short for my curiosity. I do not know that I was ever content with a
single perusal.

Of dear Mrs. Salusbury I never expect much better news than you send me;
_de pis en pis_ is the natural and certain course of her dreadful
malady. I am content, when it leaves her ease enough for the exercise of
her mind. Why should Mr. **** suppose, that what I took the liberty of
suggesting, was concerted with you? He does not know how much I revolve
his affairs, and how honestly I desire his prosperity. I hope he has let
the hint take some hold of his mind.

Your declaration to Miss **** is more general than my opinions allow. I
think an unlimited promise of acting by the opinion of another so wrong,
that nothing, or hardly anything, can make it right. All unnecessary
vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future which
has not been given us