The same year (after a length of different applications, for several seasons, at both Theatres without success) his Tragedy, called Merope, was brought upon the stage in Drury-Lane by Mr. Garrick; to whom, as well as to another gentleman he likewise highly both admired and esteemed, he was greatly obliged; and his own words (here borrowed) will shew how just a sense he had of these obligations.—­They begin the preface to the play.

’If there can be a pride that ranks with virtues, it is that we feel from friendships with the worthy.  Mr. Mallet, therefore, must forgive me, that I boast the honour he has done my Merope—­I have so long been a retreater from the world, that one of the best spirits in it told me lately, I had made myself an alien there.  I must confess, I owe so many obligations to its ornaments of most distinguished genius, that I must have looked upon it as a great unhappiness to have made choice of solitude, could I have judged society in general, by a respect so due to these adorners of it.’

And in relation to this Tragedy he says, after very justly censuring Monsieur de Voltaire, for representing in the preface to his Merope the English as incapable of Tragedy,

’To such provoking stimulations I have owed inducement to retouch, for Mr. Voltaire’s use, the characters in his high boasted Merope; and I have done it on a plan as near his own as I could bring it with a safe conscience; that is to say, without distaste to English audiences.

This he likewise dedicated to lord Bolingbroke; and was the last he ever wrote.—­There is a melancholy thread of fatal prophecy in the beginning of it; of his own approaching dissolution.

  Cover’d in fortune’s shade, I rest reclin’d;
  My griefs all silent; and my joys resign’d. 
  With patient eye life’s evening gloom survey: 
  Nor shake th’out-hast’ning sands; nor bid ’em stay—­
  Yet, while from life my setting prospects fly,
  Fain wou’d my mind’s weak offspring shun to die. 
  Fain wou’d their hope some light through time explore;
  The name’s kind pasport—­When the man’s no more.

From about the time he was solliciting the bringing on this play, an illness seized him; from the tormenting pains of which he had scarce an hour’s intermission; and after making trial of all he thought could be of service to him in medicine; he was desirous to try his native air of London (as that of Plaistow was too moist a one) but he was then past all recovery, and wasted almost to a skeleton, from some internal cause, that had produced a general decay (and was believed to have been an inflamation in the kidneys; which his intense attachment to his studies might probably lay the foundation of.—­When in town, he had the comfort of being honoured with the visits of the most worthy and esteemed among his friends; but he was not permitted many weeks to taste that blessing. [Transcriber’s note:  closing brackets missing in original.]