d. The unhappy father, already overloaded with cares and
sorrows, finding this last disappointment in his domestic tenderness,
broke out into expressions of the utmost despair, cursed the day in which
he received his miserable being, and bestowed on his ungrateful and
undutiful children a malediction which he never could be prevailed on
to retract. The more his heart was disposed to friendship and affection,
the more he resented the barbarous return which his four sons had
successively made to his parental care; and this finishing blow, by
depriving him of every comfort in life, quite broke his spirit, and
threw him into a lingering fever, of which he expired, at the castle of
Chinon, near Saumur. His natural son, Geoffrey, who alone had
behaved dutifully towards him, attended his corpse to the nunnery of
Fontervrault; where it lay in state in the abbey church. Next day,
Richard, who came to visit the dead body of his father, and who,
notwithstanding his criminal conduct, was not wholly destitute of
generosity, was struck with horror and remorse at the sight; and as the
attendants observed that, at that very instant, blood gushed from the
mouth and nostrils of the corpse, he exclaimed, agreeably to a vulgar
superstition, that he was his father's murderer; and he expressed a deep
sense, though too late, of that undutiful behavior which had brought his
parent to an untimely grave.

Thus died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and thirty-fifth of
his reign, the greatest prince of his time for wisdom, virtue, and
abilities, and the most powerful in the extent of dominion of all those
that had ever filled the throne of England. His character in private,
as well as in public life, is almost without a blemish; and he seems to
have possessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes
a man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong
and well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his
conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive,
and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and
conduct in war; was provident without timidity; severe in the execution
of justice without rigor; and temperate without austerity. He preserved
health, and kept himself from corpulency, to which he was somewhat
inclined, by an abstemious diet, and by frequent exercise, particularly
hunting. When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself either
in learned co