my life be extended, will not only reconcile me to the privations and inconveniences of age, but may render that period of life in some degree acceptable.

Or the materials which CICERO possessed, no one could have made a better use, than he has done in his Essay on Old Age. But the GOSPEL has since opened purer and more valuable sources of consolation, than are to be found in Polytheism and heathen Philosophy. The miserable uncertainty, or affected indifference of some of their best and wisest men with regard to a future state, form a striking contrast to the sure and certain hope, which reliance on the word of God, and faith in the merits of our REDEEMER, will supply during

age and infirmity, to the poorest and bumblest Christian,-who

Sinks to the grave by unperceiv'd decay
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere this world be past.

IN adopting the form of a dialogue passing between eminent men of the same period, I have followed the example of Cicero. The venerable BISHOP HOUGH is the CATO of my Drama; a prelate, who enjoyed an extraordinary degree of health of body and mind, to the advanced age of ninety-two; and died, as he had lived, respected and beloved. He is well known for his manly resistance, as President of Magdalen College, to the tyranny of James the Second. His private letters, lately

published by our friend Mr. Wilmot, present an amiable portrait of his mind; and have enabled me, in some degree, to mark his peculiar manners and mode of expression; so as to offer a view of his character in his ninetieth year, in the spring which succeeded the hard frost of 1739, the point of time which I have fixed for this Dialogue. The two other parties are his friend and correspondent BISHOP GIBSON, then Bishop of London, and Mr. LYTTELTON (afterwards Lord Lyttelton) his neighbour in the country.

HAVING at first fixed on the title of SPURINNA, I was influenced by a letter of Pliny's, the first in his third book ;-a letter which I never read without real gratification, increased by circumstances of resemblance in habits, character, and

period of life; which if, from one peculiar cause, they do not strike your Lordship, will, I am confident, not escape the application of my other readers; even though I should give them no larger an extract than the following: ILLI POST SEPTIMUM ET SEPTUAGENTISSIMUM ANNUM, AURIUM OCULORUMQUE VIGOR INTEGER; INDE AGILE ET VIVIDUM CORPUS, SOLAQUE EX SENECTUTE PRUDENTIA.

11

THE

COMFORTS OF OLD AGE.

BISHOP HOUGH. My valued Brother of London, I have great pleasure in pressing your hand. In truth, I rejoice at the circumstance which has brought your Lordship into Worcestershire; may I hope in good health. You have not, I trust, suffered from the severity of a Siberian winter, unparallelled in our mild climate.