of his living fleece than of
his dead flesh?--When a man is given over, the fee should surely be
refused. Are they not now robbing his heirs?--What has thou to do, if
the will be as thou'dst have it?--He sent for thee [did he not?] to close
his eyes. He is but an uncle, is he?

Let me see, if I mistake not, it is in the Bible, or some other good
book: can it be in Herodotus?--O I believe it is in Josephus, a half-
sacred, and half-profane author. He tells us of a king of Syria put out
of his pain by his prime minister, or one who deserved to be so for his
contrivance. The story says, if I am right, that he spread a wet cloth
over his face, which killing him, he reigned in his place. A notable
fellow! Perhaps this wet cloth in the original, is what we now call
laudanum; a potion that overspreads the faculties, as the wet cloth did
the face of the royal patient; and the translator knew not how to render
it.

But how like forlorn varlet thou subscribest, 'Thy melancholy friend, J.
BELFORD!' Melancholy! For what? To stand by, and see fair play between
an old man and death? I thought thou hadst been more of a man; that thou
art not afraid of an acute death, a sword's point, to be so plaugily
hip'd at the consequences of a chronical one!--What though the
scarificators work upon him day by day? It's only upon a caput mortuum:
and pr'ythee go to, to use the stylum veterum, and learn of the royal
butchers; who, for sport, (an hundred times worse men than thy Lovelace,)
widow ten thousand at a brush, and make twice as many fatherless--learn
of them, I say, how to support a single death.

But art thou sure, Jack, it is a mortification?--My uncle once gave
promises of such a root-and-branch distemper: but, alas! it turned to a
smart gout-fit; and I had the mortification instead of him.--I have heard
that bark, in proper doses, will arrest a mortification in its progress,
and at last cure it. Let thy uncle's surgeon know, that it is worth more
than his ears, if he prescribe one grain of the bark.

I wish my uncle had given me the opportunity of setting thee a better
example: thou shouldst have seen what a brave fellow I had been. And had
I had occasion to write, my conclusion would have been this: 'I hope the
old Trojan's happy. In that hope, I am so; and

'Thy rejoicing friend,
'R. LOVELACE.'

Dwell not always, Jack, upon one subject. Let me have poor Belton's
story. The sooner the better. If I can be