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.
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