Certamen Epistolare,
Between an Attorney of Cliffords-Inn and a dead Parson. By Mr. T. Brown.
The Argument.
A fellow of a college came up to town about business; which detaining him there much longer than he expected, he was forc’d to borrow five pounds of his landlady, a widow in Shoe-lane, and promis’d to pay her within a month. At his return to Cambridge, a living in Lincolnshire fell vacant, and the College presented him to it. On the day of his institution he drank so plentifully with his parishioners, that he fell sick of a fever, which dispatch’d him in a few days. All this while the widow wonder’d what was become of the gentleman; and after several months forbearance, having no news of him, employ’d an Attorney of Clifford’s-Inn to write to him for the five pounds. The letter coming to the College some eight months after our Parson’s decease, a gentleman of the same house had the curiosity to open it; and to carry on the frolick, answer’d it in the name of the dead man, which gave occasion to the following commerce.
LETTER I.
To Mr.—— at his Chambers in—— College in Cambridge.
SIR,
INgatum fi dixere omnia dixeris, was the saying of one of the greatest sages of antiquity; to whose name and merits I presume you can be no stranger. Perit quod facias ingrato, was likewise the saying of another Græcian philosopher, as you will find in Erasmus’s adagies. Save a thief from the gallows and he’ll cut your throat, is a proverb of our own growth; and we have a thousand instances in antient and modern history to confirm the truth of it.
Indeed ingratitude is so monstrous and execrable a vice, that, according to the Roman orator’s observation (I need not tell you, that when I say the Roman orator, I always mean Tully) the very earth itself, the bruta tellus, as Horace deservedly calls it, is a standing testimony against all ungrateful men, and rises up in judgment against them. For does not this earth, the vilest of the four elements, make grateful returns to the husbandman for the little cost and pains he bestows upon her? Does she not sometimes give thirty, sometimes twenty, and at least ten measures of corn for the one he entrusted her with? Whereas an ungrateful wretch is so far from doubling or trebling a kindness done to him, that ’tis next door to a miracle, if he can be brought to give back the principal.
And now, Sir, you’ll ask me, I suppose, what I mean by declaming thus againgst ingratitude, any more than simony or sacrilege, or any other sin whatever; and particularly how this comes to affect you? Why, Sir, don’t be so hasty, I beseech you, and you’ll soon be satisfied.
You must understand me then, that one Mrs. Rebecca Blackman, widow, who lives at the sign of the Griffin in Shoe-lane, (I suppose, Sir, somebody’s conscience begins to fly in his face by this time) told me, that a certain gentleman of Cambridge, who very much resembles you in name, face, and person, (and now Sir, I humbly conceive that somebody that shall be nameless blushes) borrow’d of her upon the first of April, 1698, in the tenth year of his majesty king William’s reign, the sum of five pounds, (well Sir, let him blush on, for blushing is a sign of grace) which he promis’d to repay her in verbo sacerdotis, within a month after, (good Lord! to see how canonically some people can break their words) upon the word of a gentleman, as he was a christian, and all that. But mind what follows, Sir. This worthy gentleman, I told you of, altho’ he was bound to the performance of his promise by all that was good and sacred; and if good and sacred would not bind him, by a note under his own hand, wherein he promis’d to pay to Mrs. Rebecca Blackman, widow, or order, the aforesaid sum of five pounds upon demand; nevertheless, and notwithstanding all this, he has not had the manners so much as to send her a letter to excuse himself for this delay, and takes no more notice of her, than if he had never seen any such person as Mrs. Rebecca Blackman in all his life.