"Geo. Steevens."
"P.S. I hope your third volume is in the press, as it is very much enquired after."
It is now time to bid farewell to the subject of this tremendous note; and most sincerely do I wish I could 'draw the curtain' upon it, and say 'good night,' with as much cheerfulness and satisfaction at Atterbury did upon the close of his professional labours. But the latter moments of Steevens were moments of mental anguish. He grew not only irritable, but outrageous; and, in full possession of his faculties, he raved in a manner which could have been expected only from a creature bred up without notions of morality or religion. Neither complacency nor 'joyful hope' soothed his bed of death. His language was, too frequently, the language of imprecation; and his wishes and apprehensions such as no rational Christian can think upon without agony of heart. Although I am not disposed to admit the whole of the testimony of the good woman who watched by his bed-side, and paid him, when dead, the last melancholy attentions of her office—although my prejudices (as they may be called) will not allow me to believe that the windows shook, and that strange noises and deep groans were heard at midnight in his room—yet no creature of common sense (and this woman possessed the quality in an eminent degree) could mistake oaths for prayers, or boisterous treatment for calm and gentle usage. If it be said—why
"draw his frailties from their drear abode?"
the answer is obvious, and, I should hope, irrefragable. A duty, and a sacred one too, is due to the living. Past examples operate upon future ones: and posterity ought to know, in the instance of this accomplished scholar and literary antiquary, that neither the sharpest wit, nor the most delicate intellectual refinement, can, alone, afford a man 'peace at the last.' The vessel of human existence must be secured by other anchors than these, when the storm of death approaches!
Loren. You have seen a few similar copies in the library; which I obtained after a strenuous effort. There was certainly a very great degree of Book-Madness exhibited at the sale of Steevens's library—and yet I remember to have witnessed stronger symptoms of the Bibliomania!
Lis. Can it be possible? Does this madness
'Grow with our growth, and strengthen with our strength?'
Will not such volcanic fury burn out in time?
Phil. You prevent Lysander from resuming, by the number and rapidity of your interrogatories. Revert to your first question.