I forget if I have ever read you the sweet words that accompanied to me the kind legacies left me by my honoured friend. I believe not. They were ordered to be sent me with the portrait of Sacharissa, and two medallions of their majesties: they were originally written to accompany the legacy to the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Hurd, as you may perceive by the style, but it was desired they might also be copied:—
“I take this liberty, that my much esteemed and respected friend may sometimes recollect a person who was so sensible of the honour of her friendship and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”
Need I—O, I am sure I need not say with what tender, grateful, sorrowing joy I received these sweet pledges of her invaluable regard!
To these, by another codicil, was added the choice of one of her mosaic flowers. And verbally, on the night but one before she died, she desired I might have her fine quarto edition of Shakespeare, sweetly saying she had never received so much pleasure from him in any other way as through my reading.
THE HASTINGS TRIAL AND MR. WINDHAM AGAIN. The part of this month in
which my Susanna was in town I kept no journal at all. And I have now nothing to add but to copy those memorandums I made of the trial on the day I went to Westminster Hall with my two friends,[274] previously to the deep calamity on which I have dwelt. They told me they could not hear what Mr. Windham said; and there is a spirit in his discourse more worth their hearing than any other thing I have now to write.
You may remember his coming straight from the managers, in their first procession to their box, and beginning at once a most animated attack—scarcely waiting first to say “How do!”—before he exclaimed “I have a great quarrel with you—I am come now purposely to quarrel with you—you have done me mischief irreparable—you have ruined me!”
“Have I?”