her powerful influence for the purpose of procuring copies of these literary remains of the great Dryden, evinces not only the benignity of her disposition, but her good taste and love of letters, one of the surest sources of happiness to the possessor, and no inconsiderable ornament of the highest station.
“Whenever an opportunity shall offer itself, he requests that Lady Ailesbury will have the goodness to express to her Royal Highness the sentiments of gratitude and respect imprinted upon his mind by her Royal Highness’s gracious interposition on the present occasion, which has obtained these memorials of one of our most celebrated English poets that otherwise, perhaps, might have been lost to posterity.
"F. P. Monday, March 2nd, 1812.”
Soon afterwards he proceeded to the country; but the scene, or the season, failed to give relief. Excess in long-continued study had doubtless induced aggravated dyspepsia—what hard student has escaped it?—with more or less permanent disease of the stomach. Emaciation and exhaustion of the animal powers succeeded. Instead of throwing off study, seeking home-travelling, horse exercise, seaside residence, and frequent change, the routine of remedies already adopted in town was continued. Thus we find him a solitary, comfortless patient in the middle of April, in a letter to Mrs. Smith, an intimate friend of his sisters, and near relative of the Jephsons. The utter absence of self to save the sensibility of his sisters in this extremity, evinces the thoroughly amiable qualities of this very amiable man.
