"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, too, after had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move or turn myself in bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin with. And besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows! if it be ominous, it can end in nothing but hanging."----"I do hope to recover my hurt so farre within five or six days (though it be uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it) as to walk about again. And then, methinks, you and I and _the Dean_ might be very merry upon St. Ann's Hill. You might very conveniently come hither by way of Hampton Town, lying there one night. I write this in pain, and can say no more.--_Verbum sapienti._" It is stated, by Sprat, that the last illness of Cowley was owing to his having taken cold through staying too long among his labourers in the meadows; but, in Spence's _Anecdotes_ we are informed, (on the authority of Pope,) that "his death was occasioned by a mere accident whilst his great friend, Dean Sprat, was with him on a visit at Chertsey. They had been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's, who, (according to the fashion of those times,) made them too welcome. They did not set out for their walk home till it was too late; and had drank so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off. The parish still talk of the drunken Dean." * * * * * A PRETTY COMPLIMENT. Although Dr. Johnson had (or professed to have) a profound and unjustified contempt for actors, he succeeded in comporting himself towards Mrs. Siddons with great politeness; and once, when she called to see him at Bolt Court, and his servant Frank could not immediately furnish her with a chair, the doctor said, "You see, madam, that wherever you go there are _no seats to be got_." * * * * * THOMAS DAY, AND HIS MODEL WIFE. Day, the author of _Sandford and Merton_, was an eccentric but amiable man; he retired into the country "to exclude himself," as he said, "from the vanity, vice, and deceptive character of man," but he appears to have been strangely jilted by women. When about the age of twenty-one, and after his suit had been rejected by a young lady to whom he had paid his addresses, Mr. Day formed the singular project of educating a wife for himself. This was based upon the notion of Rousseau, that "all the genuine worth of the human species is perverted by society; and that children should be educated apart from the world, in order that their minds should be kept untainted with, and ignorant of, its vices, prejudices, and artificial manners."