[149] Thomas Secker, born 1693, died 1768; made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1758.
[150] Lived with the Seckers; daughter of Edward, second son of Dr. W. Talbot, D.D., of Durham.
[151] The court of the Emperor Augustus.
PENURIOUS LIVING
The cowslips Mrs. Perceval asked for were doubtless intended for making that delicious but now seldom met with cowslip wine. Few people are aware that a claret glass of cowslip wine before going to bed is an innocent and generally successful soporific.
To Mrs. Donnellan.
“Hayton, April 20, 1741.
“Dear Madam,
“I had the pleasure of your letter yesterday, it made me very happy. If my friends at a distance did not keep my affections awake, I should be lulled into a state of insensibility, divided as I am from all I love.... What’s Cicero to me or I to Cicero? as Hamlet would say; and for myself, though this same little, insignificant self be very dear unto me, yet I have not used to make it my sole object of love and delight....
“I want just such a companion as you would be, and how happy would your kind compliance with that wish make me, if the good old folk here would accommodate you; but they are so fearful of strangers, I know it impossible to persuade them to it. They are not very fine people; they have a little estate, and help it out with a little farming: are very busy and careful, and the old man’s cautionness has dwindled into penuriousness, so that he eats in fear of waste and riot, sleeps with the dread of thieves, denies himself everything for fear of wanting anything, riches give him no plenty, increase no joy, prosperity no ease: he has the curse of covetousness to want the property of his neighbours, while he dare not touch his own: the Harpy Avarice drives him from his own meat, the sum of his wisdom and his gains will be by living poor, to die rich....