If this character may be of any service to you, I shall heartily rejoice, it being my highest ambition to approve my self,
Your most, &c. Q. Z.
ANSWER V.
NAY, Sir, since you are so peremptory and all that, I have sent you my last conclusive answer, and am resolv’d to be plagu’d with you no longer. Hoping therefore that your worship is in good health, as your humble servant is at this present writing, this comes to let you know (nay don’t startle, I beseech you) that I am fairly and honestly dead (oh! fy, Sir, why should you be discompos’d at so small a matter as that is) in short, dead to all intents and purposes as a door-nail; or if that won’t serve your turn, as dead as Methusalah, or any of the patriarchs before the flood. And because, Sir, I am in a very good humour at present, and somewhat dispos’d to be merry (which you’ll say is somewhat odd in a dead man) and besides having a mighty respect for a person of your worth and gravity, I will let you know what distemper I dy’d of, and give you the whole history of my illness from Dan to Beersheba. Upon the 20th of July last, old stile, I was invited to a christning in a certain village in Lincolnshire, where I had the honour of being vicar; and by a strange fatality was over-persuaded to eat some custard, which is the most pernicious aliment in the world, but especially in the dog-days. Since I have been in the Elysian Fields, meeting with Galen and Dioscorides the other day, I told them my case, and both of ’em told me that custard had done my business. Galen whisper’d me in the ear, and told me that whatever sham stories the historians had palm’d upon the world Trajan got his death by nothing but eating of custard at Antioch, and mention’d two or three other eminent persons that had their heels tript up by that pernicious food. Dioscorides added farther, that custard was destructive of the intellect, and conjur’d me that the next time I writ to any of my acquaintance in London, I would desire them to present his most humble service to my Lord Mayor and court of Aldermen, and advise ’em as from him to refrain from custard, because it obnubilated the understanding, and was detrimental to the memory. So much by way of digression, but now, Sir, to proceed in the history of my illness: this eating of custard first of all gave me a cachexy, and ’twas my misfortune that there was no brandy to be had in the house, for in all probability a cogue of true orthodox Nantz, would have corrected the crudity of the custard. This cachexy in twelve hours turn’d to a Dolor alvi, that to a Peripneumonia in the Diaphragm, and that to an Epyema in the Glandula Pinealis. Upon this a hundred other distempers came pouring upon me like thunder and lightning, for you know when a man is once going, down with him is the word; that very fairly dispatch’d me in four days, and so I dy’d without a doctor to help to dispatch me, or an attorney to make my will. A little before I troop’d off, I desir’d my parishoners to bury me under the great church-spout which accordingly they did, I thank ’em for’t, and upon every shower of rain I find a refreshment by it; for you must know that when I was living, I was very thirsty in my nature, and abounded in adust cholerick humours.
I believe, Sir, you might have writ to a thousand and a thousand dead men, who would never have given themselves the trouble to answer your letters, or have been so communicative of their secrets as you have found me; but, Sir, I scorn to act under-board. And if this don’t satisfy all your doubts, I can only wish I had you here with me, to give you farther conviction.
And now Sir, let me desire you to put your hand to your heart, and consider calmly and sedately with yourself, whether it be not illegal as well as barbarous, to disturb the repose of the dead, and persecute them in their very graves? You that are so full of your Cases and your Precedents, tell me what Case or Precedent you can alledge to justify so unrighteous a Procedure? Is it not a known maxim in law, that death puts a stop to all Processes whatsoever, and that when a man has once paid the great debt of nature, he has compounded for all the rest? How then can you make me amends for the injuries you have done me, and the great charges you have put me to? For upon the faith and honour of a dead man, the very passage of your letters to this subterranean world, has cost me above five pounds, the pretended sum you charge me with. However, if Heaven will forgive you, for my part I do; and to show you, that after so many horrid provocations I am still in charity with you, I remain,
Your defunct Friend and Servant,
Q. Z.
Feb. 5. From the
Elysian-Fields.
P. S. All the news that I can send you from this part of the world, is, that we are troubled with none of your pofession here, which is no small part of our happiness, I assure you; and, upon a strict enquiry, I find, that not one Attorney for these 1500 years, has been so impudent, as to give St. Peter the trouble of using his keys.