Prefaced by a phlegmatic hem; sad, very sad, truly! cried Mowbray; who sat himself down on one side of the bed, as I sat on the other:  his eyes half closed, and his lips pouting out to his turned-up nose, his chin curdled [to use one of thy descriptions]; leaving one at a loss to know whether stupid drowsiness or intense contemplation had got most hold of him.

An excellent, however uneasy lesson, Mowbray! said I.—­By my faith it is!  It may one day, who knows how soon? be our own case!

I thought of thy yawning-fit, as described in thy letter of Aug. 13.  For up started Mowbray, writhing and shaking himself as in an ague-fit; his hands stretched over his head—­with thy hoy! hoy! hoy! yawning.  And then recovering himself, with another stretch and a shake, What’s o’clock? cried he; pulling out his watch—­and stalking by long tip-toe strides through the room, down stairs he went; and meeting the maid in the passage, I heard him say—­Betty, bring me a bumper of claret; thy poor master, and this d——­d Belford, are enough to throw a Hercules into the vapours.

Mowbray, after this, assuming himself in our friend’s library, which is, as thou knowest, chiefly classical and dramatical, found out a passage in Lee’s Oedipus, which he would needs have to be extremely apt; and in he came full fraught with the notion of the courage it would give the dying man, and read it to him.  ’Tis poetical and pretty.  This is it: 

      When the sun sets, shadows that show’d at noon
      But small, appear most long and terrible: 
      So when we think fate hovers o’er our heads,
      Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds: 
      Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death;
      Nature’s worst vermin scare her godlike sons: 
      Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
      Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves. 
      Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus;
      While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff,
      And sweat with our imagination’s weight.

He expected praises for finding this out.  But Belton turning his head from him, Ah, Dick! (said he,) these are not the reflections of a dying man!—­What thou wilt one day feel, if it be what I now feel, will convince thee that the evils before thee, and with thee, are more than the effects of imagination.

I was called twice on Sunday night to him; for the poor fellow, when his reflections on his past life annoy him most, is afraid of being left with the women; and his eyes, they tell me, hunt and roll about for me.  Where’s Mr. Belford?—­But I shall tire him out, cries he—­yet beg of him to step to me—­yet don’t—­yet do; were once the doubting and changeful orders he gave:  and they called me accordingly.

But, alas!  What could Belford do for him?  Belford, who had been but too often the companion of his guilty hours; who wants mercy as much as he does; and is unable to promise it to himself, though ’tis all he can bid his poor friend rely upon!