The following letter, written immediately after the latter event, bears the impress of strong and even agonised feeling, to such a degree as renders it almost painful to read it:-- LETTER 56. TO MR. SCROPE DAVIES. "Newstead Abbey, August 7. 1811. "My dearest Davies, "Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him the day before yesterday. My dear Scrope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me--I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on _Friday_,--on Saturday he was not. In ability, who was like Matthews? How did we all shrink before him? You do me but justice in saying, I would have risked my paltry existence to have preserved his. This very evening did I mean to write, inviting him, as I invite you, my very dear friend, to visit me. God forgive * * * for his apathy! What will our poor Hobhouse feel? His letters breathe but or Matthews. Come to me, Scrope, I am almost desolate--left almost alone in the world--I had but you, and H., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors whilst I can. Poor M., in his letter of Friday, speaks of his intended contest for Cambridge[19], and a speedy journey to London. Write or come, but come if you can, or one or both. "Yours ever." [Footnote 15: In many instances the mothers of illustrious poets have had reason to be proud no less of the affection than of the glory of their sons; and Tasso, Pope, Gray, and Cowper, are among these memorable examples of filial tenderness. In the lesser poems of Tasso, there are few things so beautiful as his description, in the Canzone to the Metauro, of his first parting with his mother:-- "Me dal sen della madre empia fortuna Pargoletto divelse," &c. ] [Footnote 16: Napoleon.] [Footnote 17: In a letter, written between two and three months after his mother's death, he states no less a number than six persons, all friends or relatives, who had been snatched away from him by death between May and the end of August.] [Footnote 18: In continuation of the note quoted in the text, he says of Matthews--"His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the _ablest candidates_, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired." One of the candidates, thus described, was Mr. Thomas Barnes, a gentleman whose career since has kept fully the promise of his youth, though, from the nature of the channels through which his literary labours have been directed, his great talents are far more extensively known than his name.]