He says, in a
letter to that gentleman, dated Lichfield, October 20, that "he should
be glad to give so skilful a lover of antiquities any information." He
adds, "At Ashbourne, where I had very little company, I had the luck to
borrow Mr. Bowyer's Life, a book, so full of contemporary history, that
a literary man must find some of his old friends. I thought that I
could, now and then, have told you some hints worth your notice: we,
perhaps, may talk a life over. I hope we shall be much together. You
must now be to me what you were before, and what dear Mr. Allen was
besides. He was taken unexpectedly away, but, I think, he was a very
good man. I have made very little progress in recovery. I am very weak,
and very sleepless; but I live on and hope."
In that languid condition he arrived, on the 16th of November, at his
house in Bolt court, there to end his days. He laboured with the dropsy
and an asthma. He was attended by Dr. Heberden, Dr. Warren, Dr.
Brocklesby, Dr. Butter, and Mr. Cruikshank, the eminent surgeon.
Eternity presented to his mind an awful prospect, and, with as much
virtue as, perhaps, ever is the lot of man, he shuddered at the thought
of his dissolution. His friends awakened the comfortable reflection of a
well-spent life; and, as his end drew near, they had the satisfaction of
seeing him composed, and even cheerful, insomuch that he was able, in
the course of his restless nights, to make translations of Greek
epigrams from the Anthologia; and to compose a Latin epitaph for his
father, his mother, and his brother Nathaniel.
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