Notwithstanding these and other infirmities, a few friends loved him well. Among some of his better qualities, he possessed good conversation talents, talents he used to say not so much cultivated in this country as they ought, since they never fail to produce a powerful impression, and often outweigh more substantial and important endowments. Every man, he would assert, of the commonest observation, if he has lived at all in the world, must have much to remember which deserves communication. He was once urging this in his careless way, when he was reminded by a friend, whose judgment he much valued, that few were better qualified than himself, to produce from what he must have remembered, and was certainly able to communicate, a pleasing and a useful memorial of himself and his contemporaries; their entrance into and progress in life; their pursuits, successes, and disappointments. He promised to think of it, and it appears that he did so. It is to be apprehended that some untoward circumstances, some mortifications or disappointments, clouds of duskier hue, attended him in the decline of life. He disappeared rather abruptly from among his friends. One morn we missed him on the ’customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came, nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. The circumstances of his death are but imperfectly known. No one was more likely to fall a premature victim to too great anxiety, and it was conjectured that too large a share of it, accelerated his withdrawing himself from the society he loved. Be this as it may: a few months since, was advertised to be sold by auction, at the rooms of a popular auctioneer, under a fictitious name, his well chosen library. Among the books were some manuscripts, which it was thought the family ought to have preserved. One in particular, was a very large Common-place-book, from the examination of which it was evident, that at some period of his life or other, he had meditated the composition of Memoirs of his literary life, with anecdotes of all the distinguished personages, with whom he had lived on terms of greater or less familiarity. But all was confusion; there was nothing like arrangement. In one place, “Anecdotes of Bishop ⸺,” in another, “Particulars of my Interview with the Lord Chancellor.” In the very middle of the volume, “A Narrative of my Boyish Days till I went to the University.” This last, as far as it goes, seems the only portion of the manuscript, in which any thing like chronological order was observed.