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In Dr Matty's Life of Lord Chesterfield, he mentions that the earl had seen Lord Bolingbroke for several months labouring under a cruel, and to appearance incurable disorder. A cancerous humour in his face made a daily progress; and the empirical treatment he submitted to not only hastened his end, but also exposed him to the most excruciating pain. He saw him, for the last time, the day before his tortures began. Though the unhappy patient, as well as his friend, did then expect that he should recover, and accordingly desired him not to come again till his cure was completed, yet he still took leave of him in a manner which showed how much he was affected. He embraced the earl with tenderness, and said, «God, who placed me here, will do what he pleases with me hereafter, and he knows best what to do. May he bless you.»-And in a letter from Chesterfield to a lady of rank at Paris, he says, I frequently see our friend Bolingbroke, but I see him with great concern. A humour he has long had in his cheek proves to be cancerous, and has made an alarming progress of late. Hitherto it is not attended with pain, which is all he wishes, for as to the rest he is resigned. Truly a mind like his, so far superiour to the generality, would have well deserved that nature should have made an effort in his favour as to the body, and given him an uncommon share of health and duration. »

The last scene is thus lamented, in a letter to the same lady:« Are you not greatly shocked, but I am sure you are, at the dreadful death of our friend Bolingbroke? The remedy has hastened his death, against which there was no remedy, for his cancer was not topical, but universal, and had so infected the whole mass of his blood, as to be incurable. What I most lament is, that the medicines put him to exquisite pain; an evil I dread much more than

death, both for my friends and myself. I lose a warm, an amiable, and instructive friend. I saw him a fortnight before his death, when he depended upon a cure, and so did I; and he desired I would not come any more till he was quite well, which he expected would be in ten or twelve days. The next day the great pains came on, and never left him till within two days of his death, during which he lay insensible. What a man! what extensive knowledge! what a memory! what eloquence! His passions, which were strong, were injurious to the delicacy of his sentiments; they were apt to be confounded together, and often wilfully. The world will do him more justice now than in his lifetime. »

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