However, the instant Mrs. Schwellenberg left the room, and we remained alone, the queen, approaching me in the softest manner, and looking earnestly in my face, said, “You could not be offended, surely, at what I said.”
“O no, ma’am,” cried I, deeply indeed penetrated by such unexpected condescension. “I have been longing to make a speech to your majesty upon this matter; and it was but yesterday that I entreated Mrs. Delany to make it for me, and to express to your majesty the very deep sense I feel of the lenity with which this Subject has been treated in my hearing.”
“Indeed,” cried she, with eyes strongly expressive of the complacency with which she heard me, “I have always spoke as little as possible upon this affair. I remember but twice that I have named it: once I said to the Bishop of Carlisle, that I thought most of these letters had better have been spared the printing; and once to Mr. Langton, at the Drawing-room, I said, ‘Your friend Dr. Johnson, sir, has had many friends busy to publish his books, and his memoirs, and his meditations, and his thoughts; but I think he wanted one friend more.’ ‘What for? ma’am,’ cried he; ‘A friend to suppress them,’ I answered. And, indeed, this is all I ever said about the business.”
A PAIR OF PARAGONS.
I was amply recompensed in spending an evening the most to my natural taste of any I have spent officially under the royal roof. How high Colonel Wellbred stands with me you know; Mr. Fairly, with equal gentleness, good breeding, and delicacy, adds a far more general turn for conversation, and seemed not only ready, but pleased, to open upon subjects of such serious import as were suited to his state of mind, and could not but be edifying, from a man of such high moral character, to all who heard him.
Life and death were the deep themes to which he led; and the little space between them, and the little value of that space were the subject of his comments. The unhappiness of man at least after the ardour of his first youth, and the near worthlessness of the world, seemed so deeply impressed on his mind, that no reflection appeared to be consolatory to it, save the necessary shortness of our mortal career....
“Indeed,” said he, “there is no time—I know of none—in which life is well worth having. The prospect before us is never such as to make it worth preserving, except from religious motives.”
I felt shocked and sorry. Has he never tasted happiness, who so deeply drinks of sorrow? He surprised me, and filled me, indeed, with equal wonder and pity. At a loss how to make an answer sufficiently general, I made none at all, but referred to Colonel Wellbred: perhaps he felt the same difficulty, for he said nothing; and Mr. Fairly then gathered an answer for himself, by saying, “Yes, it may, indeed, be attainable in the only actual as well as only right way to seek it,—that of doing good!”