nce, till that grace is denied me; for, oh! my dear Belford! I can
now neither repent, nor pray, as I ought; my heart is hardened, and I can
do nothing but despair!--

More he would have said; but, overwhelmed with grief and infirmity, he
bowed his head upon his pangful bosom, endeavouring to hide from the
sight of the hardened Mowbray, who just then entered the room, those
tears which he could not restrain.

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