If I may judge of the hearts of other parents by my own, I cannot doubt
but you will take it well to be informed that you have yet an opportunity
to save yourself and family great future regret, by dispatching hither
some one of it with your last blessing, and your lady's, to the most
excellent of her sex.
I have some reason to believe, Sir, that she has been represented to you
in a very different light from the true one. And this it is that induces
me to acquaint you, that I think her, on the best grounds, absolutely
irreproachable in all her conduct which has passed under my eye, or come
to my ear; and that her very misfortunes are made glorious to her, and
honourable to all that are related to her, by the use she has made of
them; and by the patience and resignation with which she supports herself
in a painful, lingering, and dispiriting decay! and by the greatness of
mind with which she views her approaching dissolution. And all this from
proper motives; from motives in which a dying saint might glory.
She knows not that I write. I must indeed acknowledge, that I offered to
do so some days ago, and that very pressingly: nor did she refuse me from
obstinacy--she seemed not to know what that is--but desired me to forbear
for two days only, in hopes that her newly-arrived cousin, who, as she
heard, was soliciting for her, would be able to succeed in her favour.
I hope I shall not be thought an officious man on this occasion; but, if
I am, I cannot help it, being driven to write, by a kind of parental and
irresistible impulse.
But, Sir, whatever you think fit to do, or permit to be done, must be
speedily done; for she cannot, I verily think, live a week: and how long
of that short space she may enjoy her admirable intellects to take
comfort in the favours you may think proper to confer upon her cannot be
said. I am, Sir,
Your most humble servant,