I now come to a more melancholy theme, though your joy will still be pure, except from what part you take in a private grief of mine.  It is the death of Mr. Winnington,(1196) whom you only knew as One Of the first men in England, from his parts and from his employment.  But I was familiarly acquainted with him, loved and admired him, for he had great good-nature, and a quickness of wit most peculiar to himself:  and for his public talents he has left nobody equal to him, as before, nobody was superior to him but my father.  The history of his death is a cruel tragedy, but what, to indulge me who am full of it, and want to vent the narration, you must hear.  He was not quite fifty, extremely temperate and regular, and of a constitution remarkably strong, hale and healthy.  A little above a fortnight ago he was seized with an inflammatory rheumatism, a common and known case, dangerous, but scarce ever remembered to be fatal.  He had a strong aversion to all physicians, and lately had put himself into the hands of one Thomson, a quack, whose foundation of method could not be guessed, but by a general contradiction to all received practice.  This man was the oracle of Mrs. Masham,(1197) sister, and what one ought to hope she did not think of, coheiress to Mr. Winnington-. his other sister is as mad in methodism as this in physic, and never saw him.  This ignorant wretch, supported by the influence of the sister, soon made such progress in fatal absurdities, as purging, bleeding, and starving him, and checking all perspiration, that his friends Mr. Fox and Sir Charles Williams absolutely insisted on calling in a physician.  Whom could they call, but Dr. Bloxholme, an intimate old friend of Mr. Winnington, and to whose house he always went once a year?  This doctor, grown paralytic and indolent, gave in to every thing the quack advised:  Mrs. Masham all the while ranting and raving At last, which at last came very speedily, they had reduced him to a total dissolution, by a diabetes and a thrush; his friends all the time distracted for him, but hindered from assisting him; so far, that the night before he died, Thomson gave him another purge, though he could not get it all down.  Mr. Fox by force brought Dr. Hulse, but it was too late:  and even then, when Thomson owned him lost, Mrs. Masham was against trying Hulse’s assistance.  In short, madly, or wickedly, they have murdered(1199) a man to whom nature would have allotted a far longer period, and had given a decree of abilities that were carrying that period to so great a height of lustre, as perhaps would have excelled both ministers, who in this country have owed their greatness to the greatness of their merit.

Adieu! my dear Sir; excuse what I have written to indulge my own concern, in consideration of what I have written to give you JOY.

P. S. Thank you for Mr. Oxenden; but don’t put yourself to any great trouble, for I desired you before not to mind formal letters much, which I am obliged to give:  I write to you separately, when I wish you to be particularly kind to my recommendations.