What new view, either of the occupation, or its execution, had determined its total relinquishment, was never to its instigator revealed; the solemn look with which he announced that it was over, had an expression that she had not courage to explore.
Enough, however, remains of the original work, scattered amongst his manuscripts, to shew his project to have been skilfully conceived, while its plan of execution was modestly and sensibly circumscribed to his bounded knowledge of the subject. And its idea, with its general sketch, drawn up at so advanced a period of a life—verging upon eighty—that had been spent in another and an absorbent study, must needs remain a monument of wonder for the general herd of mankind; and a stimulus to courage and enterprise for the gifted few, with whom longevity is united with genius.
THE DOCTOR’S WAY OF LIFE.
From the time of this happy return, the Memorialist passed at Chelsea College every moment that she could tear from personal calls that, most unopportunely yet imperiously, then demanded her attention.
Shut up nevertheless, as the Doctor was now from the general world and its commerce, the seclusion of his person was by no means attended with any seclusion of kindness; or any exemption from what he deemed a parental devoir.
When, on the 12th day of the following year, 1813, his returned daughter, though her first enjoyment was her restoration to his society, excused herself from accompanying her son to the College; and the Doctor gathered that that day, the 6th of January, and the anniversary of the lamented loss of their mutual darling, Susanna, had been yearly devoted, since that privation, to meditative commemoration; he sent his confidential housekeeper to the Memorialist’s apartment with the following lines:
“Few individuals have lost more valuable friends than myself,—Twining, Crisp, poor Bewley, Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds—If I were to keep an anniversary for all these severally, I should not have time allowed me for diminishing the first excess of my affliction for each.”
It may, perhaps, be superfluous, and yet seems unavoidable to mention, that again, as after the death of Mr. Crisp, she hastened to him with her grateful acknowledgments for this exhortation; and that she has ever since refused herself that stated sad indulgence.
Still, also, the epistolary pen of the Doctor not only retained its kind, but kept alive its fanciful flow; as witness the following extract from a letter, written in his eighty-seventh year, three months later than the date of the last copied billet, and in answer to a letter from the Memorialist, written during a visit to Mrs. Locke, senior, at Norbury Park;