Between an _Attorney_ of _Cliffords-Inn_ and a dead _Parson_. By Mr. T. BROWN. The ARGUMENT. _A fellow of a college came up to town about business; which detaining him there much longer than he expected, he was forc’d to borrow five pounds of his landlady, a widow in_ Shoe-lane, _and promis’d to pay her within a month. At his return to_ Cambridge, _a living in_ Lincolnshire _fell vacant, and the_ College _presented him to it. On the day of his institution he drank so plentifully with his parishioners, that he fell sick of a fever, which dispatch’d him in a few days. All this while the widow wonder’d what was become of the gentleman; and after several months forbearance, having no news of him, employ’d an_ Attorney _of_ Clifford’s-Inn _to write to him for the five pounds. The letter coming to the_ College _some eight months after our_ Parson_’s decease, a gentleman of the same house had the curiosity to open it; and to carry on the frolick, answer’d it in the name of the dead man, which gave occasion to the following commerce_. LETTER I. _To Mr.---- at his Chambers in---- College in_ Cambridge. _SIR_, _Ingatum fi dixere omnia dixeris_, was the saying of one of the greatest sages of antiquity; to whose name and merits I presume you can be no stranger. _Perit quod facias ingrato_, was likewise the saying of another _Græcian_ philosopher, as you will find in _Erasmus_’s adagies. _Save a thief from the gallows and he’ll cut your throat_, is a proverb of our own growth; and we have a thousand instances in antient and modern history to confirm the truth of it. Indeed ingratitude is so monstrous and execrable a vice, that, according to the _Roman_ orator’s observation (I need not tell you, that when I say the _Roman_ orator, I always mean _Tully_) the very earth itself, the _bruta tellus_, as _Horace_ deservedly calls it, is a standing testimony against all ungrateful men, and rises up in judgment against them. For does not this earth, the vilest of the four elements, make grateful returns to the husbandman for the little cost and pains he bestows upon her? Does she not sometimes give thirty, sometimes twenty, and at least ten measures of corn for the one he entrusted her with? Whereas an ungrateful wretch is so far from doubling or trebling a kindness done to him, that ’tis next door to a miracle, if he can be brought to give back the principal. And now, Sir, you’ll ask me, I suppose, what I mean by declaming thus againgst ingratitude, any more than simony or sacrilege, or any other sin whatever; and particularly how this comes to affect you? Why, Sir, don’t be so hasty, I beseech you, and you’ll soon be satisfied.