(229) Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy in a Churchyard, and other poems.

97 Letter 38 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, April 1, 1751.

How shall I begin a letter that will-that must give you as much pain as I feel myself?  I must interrupt the story of the Prince’s death, to tell you of two more, much more important, God knows! to you and me!  One I had prepared you for-but how will you be shocked to hear that our poor Mr. Whithed is dead(230) as well as my brother!  Whithed had had a bad cough for two months:  he was going out of town to the Minchester assizes; I persuaded and sent him home from hence one morning to be blooded.  However, he went, in extreme bad weather.  His youngest brother, the clergyman, who is the greatest brute in the world, except the elder brother, the layman, dragged him out every morning to hunt, as eagerly as if it had been to hunt heretics.  One day they were overturned in a water, and then the parson made him ride forty miles:  in short, he arrived it the Vine half dead, and soon grew delirious.  Poor Mr. Chute was sent for to him last Wednesday, and sent back for two more physicians, but in vain; he expired on Friday night!  Mr. Chute is come back half distracted, and scarce to be known again.  You may easily believe that my own distress does not prevent my doing all in my power to alleviate his.  Whithed, that best of hearts, had forgiven all his elder brother’s beastliness, and has left him the Norton estate, the better half; the rest to the clergyman, with an annuity of one hundred and twenty pounds a year to his Florentine mistress, and six hundred pounds to their child.  He has left Mr. Chute one thousand pounds, which, if forty times the sum, would not comfort him, and, little as it is, does not in the least affect or alter his concern.  Indeed, he not only loses an intimate friend, but in a manner an only child; he had formed him to be one of the prettiest gentlemen in England, and had brought about a match for him, that was soon to be concluded with a Miss Nicholl, an immense fortune; and I am persuaded had fixed his heart on making him his own heir, if he himself outlived his brother.  With such a fortune, and with such expectations, how hard to die!—­or, perhaps, how lucky, before he had tasted misfortune and mortification.

I must now mention my own misfortune, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, the physicians and all the family of painful death,(231) (to alter Gray’s phrase,) were persuaded and persuaded me, that the bark, which took great place, would save my brother’s life —­but he relapsed at three o’clock on Thursday, and died last night.  He ordered to be drawn and executed his will with the greatest tranquillity and satisfaction on Saturday morning.  His spoils are prodigious-not to his own family! indeed I think his son the most ruined young man in England.  My loss, I fear, may be considerable, which is not the only motive of my concern, though,