"My dear Sir,—Last Friday I received your affectionate farewell, and therefore melancholy letter, which disabled me from sending an immediate answer to it, as I now do, in hopes this may yet find you, not much oppressed with pain, in the land of the living. I need not tell you, that your corrections are all duly attended to, as every particular shall be that you desire or order. Nor shall I now trouble you with a long letter.
"Only permit me to ask you a question or two, to which I am prompted, you will believe me, not from a foolish or fruitless curiosity, but from an earnest desire to learn the sentiments of a man, who had spent a long life in philosophic inquiries, and who, upon the extreme verge of it, seems, even in that awful and critical period, to possess all the powers of his mind in their full vigour, and in unabated tranquillity.
"I am more particularly led to give you this trouble, from a passage in one of your late letters, wherein you say, It is an idle thing in us to be concerned about any thing that shall happen after our death; yet this, you added, is natural to all men. Now I would eagerly ask, if it is natural to all men, to be interested in futurity, does not this strongly indicate that our existence will be protracted beyond this life?
"Do you now believe, or suspect, that all the powers and faculties of your own mind, which you have cultivated with so much care and success, will cease and be extinguished with your vital breath?
"Our soul, or immaterial part of us, some say, is able, when on the brink of dissolution, to take a glimpse of futurity; and for that reason I earnestly wish to have your last thoughts on this important subject.
"I know you will kindly excuse this singular application; and believe that I wish you, living or dying, every happiness that our nature is capable of enjoying, either here or hereafter; being, with the most sincere esteem and affection, my dear sir, faithfully yours."—MS. R.S.E.
"London, August 19, 1776."
This letter, if it ever reached him for whom it was designed, must have done so too late to receive an answer. But if he did peruse it, with his mind so collected and clear, yet so close on the point of being severed from those objects of literary ambition which had been its chief glory and occupation, how valuable would have been the first thought that passed across it, when the great question was brought thus so distinctly before his understanding!
[514:1] Edinburgh Review , xvii. 306.
[515:1] This letter, and Dr. Black's, are in the MSS. R.S.E.