it is by a person high in the India House, and contains the deposition of the surviving officers concerning the loss of the ship.  The pamphlet, I am told, is most unfeelingly written:  I have only seen an extract from it, containing Gilpin’s deposition, the fourth mate.  From this, it appears that every thing was done that could be done, under the circumstances, for the safety of the lives and the ship.  My poor brother was standing on the hen-coop (which is placed upon the poop, and is the most commanding situation in the vessel) when she went down, and he was thence washed overboard by a large sea, which sank the ship.  He was seen struggling with the waves some time afterwards, having laid hold, it is said, of a rope.  He was an excellent swimmer; but what could it avail in such a sea, encumbered with his clothes, and exhausted in body, as he must have been!

For myself, I feel that there is something cut out of my life which cannot be restored.  I never thought of him but with hope and delight:  we looked forward to the time, not distant, as we thought, when he would settle near us, when the task of his life would be over, and he would have nothing to do but reap his reward.  By that time, I hoped also that the chief part of my labours would be executed, and that I should be able to show him that he had not placed a false confidence in me.  I never wrote a line without a thought of its giving him pleasure:  my writings, printed and manuscript, were his delight, and one of the chief solaces of his long voyages.  But let me stop:  I will not be cast down; were it only for his sake, I will not be dejected.  I have much yet to do, and pray God to give me strength and power:  his part of the agreement between us is brought to an end, mine continues; and I hope when I shall be able to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remembrance of him dead will even animate me more than the joy which I had in him living.  I wish you would procure the pamphlet I have mentioned; you may know the right one, by its having a motto from Shakspeare, from Clarence’s dream.  I wish you to see it, that you may read G.’s statement, and be enabled, if the affair should ever be mentioned in your hearing, to correct the errors which they must have fallen into who have taken their ideas from the newspaper accounts.  I have dwelt long, too long I fear, upon this subject, but I could not write to you upon any thing else, till I had unburthened my heart.  We have great consolations from the sources you allude to; but, alas! we have much yet to endure.  Time only can give us regular tranquillity.  We neither murmur nor repine, but sorrow we must; we should be senseless else.[54]

[54] Memoirs, i. 288-98.

30. Of Dryden.

LETTER TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.[55]

[55] From Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. ii. pp. 287-9 (edit. 1856).

Paterdale, Nov. 7. 1803.