ent in his neighbourhood:

_Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour,
Follow thee up to joy and bliss for ever._

Miss Seward thus concludes one of her letters to him:--"I wish none were
permitted to enter the lists of criticism but those who feel poetic
beauty as keenly as yourself, and who have the same generous desire that
others should feel it." I mention Mr. Clive with gratitude, from a
recollection of kindnesses received from him at a very early period of
my life, and which were of such a nature, as could not fail to animate
the mind of a young man to studious exertions. Archdeacon Plimley (now
the truly venerable Archdeacon Corbet, and who has been so long an
honour to his native county), in his Agricultural Survey of Shropshire,
respectfully introduces Mr. Clive's name; and when he addressed his
charge to the diocese of Hereford, in 1793, one really cannot but apply
to Mr. Clive, what he so eloquently enforces in that charge to each
clergyman:--"to cultivate a pure spirit within their own bosoms; to be
in every instance the right-hand neighbour to each parishioner; their
private adviser, their public monitor, their example in christian
conduct, their joy in health, their consolation in sickness." In the
same vault with Mr. Archdeacon Clive, lies buried Robert Lord Clive,
conqueror of _Plassy_: on whose death appeared these extempore lines, by
a man of distinction, a friend to Lord Clive:--

Life's a surface, slippery, glassy,
Whereon tumbled Clive of Plassy;
All the wealth the east could give,
Brib'd not death to let him live:
There's no distinction in the grave
'Twixt the nabob and the slave.

His lordship's death, in 1774, was owing to the same cause which
hastened that of the most worthy of men, Sir Samuel Romilly--from
shattered and worn out nerves;--from severe study in the latter, and
from the burning climate of the east in the former. Had Lord Clive lived
a few years longer, he would have enriched the whole neighbourhood round
his native spot. His vigorous, ardently-gifted, and penetrating mind,
projected plantations and other improvements, that could only have been
conceived by such minds as Olivier de Serres, or by Sully, or by our own
Evelyn. He was in private life beloved. He was generous, social and
friendly; and if ever charity to the poor warmed the breast of any
mortal, it warmed that of Lord Clive. Few men had more kind affections
than Lord Clive.

[92] The