friend, and so generous a benefactor as dear Mr. Clark, nothing is so great an inducement to me to undertake the journey, as the prospect of spending a whole day with you at Childwick, when I anticipate the most delightful entertainment from your collection of books and letters; but above all from your company. My pen has run on till I have only left myself room to add that

I am, dear Sir,

Your most affectionate and obedient Friend,

PHILIP DODDRIDGE.

P. S. Pray give me another name, and let me. know in your next what your polite correspondent calls you. I will not allow of Heraclitus. Dr. Atterbury's translation of the Banishment of Cicero seems to me admirably well done; the language is exceedingly beautiful, and many of his translations from Tully are as graceful as the latin.

DEAR BROTHER,

TO MY BROTHER *.

Harborough, June, 9, 1726, Wednesday morning, 8 o'clock.

I MAKE it a maxim with myself to write either to you or my sister whenever I have an opportunity of writing at all; so that you have two or three letters

*

An excuse for writing short humourous accounts of business.

from me where other more ceremonious correspondents have but one. You will not then be offended, that I write no more at large, for you must consider that I have a great deal of business which requires my daily attendance.

I was up at five o'clock this morning, and I have been all this while studying the connection of a short section in the Romans, and writing letters. Nay, at this very moment, Demosthenes is waiting to entertain me with one of his Philippics, and Virgil is bringing back Æneas to his camp, where I have long been waiting in pain for his absence. Doctor Tillotson has also prepared an admirable sermon, which he will quickly deliver in my chamber with his usual grace and sweetness. And then Gerard Brandt will go on with his History of the Persecution of the Remonstrants, after their condemnation at the Synod of Dort. In the afternoon, I expect to hear from Pliny, who generally favours me with two or three epistles in a day, though a stranger and a heathen-while you, a Christian minister and my brother, will hardly write once in a quarter of a year! Then I am to drink a dish of tea with some agreeable women in the afternoon, and may possibly look over a chapter or two in the History of the Four Kings*: and if I should be immoderately transported with the joys of victory, or the sorrows of defeat, with love to my partner, or anger against my antagonist, I shall hope to find my remedy in the conversation of Mr. Bragg, who has lately undertaken to teach

* Cards

me the Government of the Passions, a lesson indeed which I ought to have learnt some time ago! Dr. Potter is instructing me in Grecian antiquities; but I fear, I shall hardly have time to speak with him to-day. However, I will, if possible, attend upon my tutor Cradock, in the evening, who is lecturing on the Epistles with great accuracy and solidity; besides this, I have a little kind of a sermon to preach in the family according to my daily custom, and then four letters to transcribe into shorthand.

Now I will leave you, who are one of the greatest clerks I know, to judge whether all this business will leave me time to say any more than how does my dear sister? Give my service to her, and to Mrs. Nettleton, and believe me to be

Your affectionate Brother and Servant,

P. DODDRIDGE.

P. S. Cousin Philip is run away, nobody knows

whither!

DEAR SIR,

TO MR. CLARK.

Harborough, June 30, 1726.

THOUGH I wrote to you a few days ago, I cannot satisfy myself to convey a letter to Mr. Hughes under a cover to you without at least a note for yourself. I was the more inclined to write again,

because in my last I was forced to omit the mention of an accident which lately happened here, the circumstances of which appeared to me very remarkable.

On the first day of this month, there was a dreadful storm of thunder and lightning in these parts. Its most fatal effects occurred at Clipstone, a town in Northamptonshire, about three miles from Harborough. There was a young shepherd about twenty-three years of age, who had always entertained a remarkable dread of such storms; on that day as it began to grow cloudy, his mother would have, dissuaded him from going out, but he said that he must go, as certain of the sheep absolutely required his attendance. This was agreeable to a tenderness of temper which, from his childhood, had been remarkable in his character. Quickly after he got into the fields, the storm arose; he was then in an open valley of greensward, and upon the neighbouring land there were two places of shelter equally distant; the one a stack of beans where some men were employed in threshing, the other, a rick of hay where nobody was. Humanly speaking, his life depended upon the choice he made between these two places, and he unhappily chose the rick. If he had any particular reason for this determination, it must probably have been the advantage which solitude would there give him for the exercise of secret devotion, to which his parents say he had always addicted himself with great constancy and care; and perhaps he intended, if the storm would permit, to read Beveridge's Private

Thoughts, which were found in his pocket. However, he had little time for either, for quickly after he got to the hay-rick, the threshers at a small distance saw it take fire! They immediately ran to extinguish it, which they did without any great difficulty, as stacked hay burns but slowly; but they found the shepherd dead! His heels were stuck up, and his back rested against a part of the rick which had not been on fire. On a more careful examination, they found that his coat was singed on the right shoulder; his waistcoat did not appear to be burnt: but his shirt was reduced to tinder! not only on the shoulder, but all over the back. The skin under it appeared a little blistered; but the flesh not at all torn. His right leg was blistered round the outer ankle, and his shoe-buckle shattered almost to perfect powder. There was no wound on any part of the body which could be thought the cause of his death. About a month before this accident, he told his mother a dream which struck deeply upon his imagination for a considerable time. He said, he fancied himself surprised by a storm of thunder, and that he fled for shelter to the wall of a house, when a great flash of lightning seemed to come directly upon him, and that immediately he found himself strangled for want of breath!

I shall venture to make no superstitious reflections upon the parallel between his dream and the manner of his death; but leave you, sir, to judge of the matter as you please, and only assure you, that you may depend upon the truth of every material