Give me leave to wonder that News of this Nature should have such heavy Wings that you should hear so little concerning your dearest Friend, and that I must make that unwilling Repetition to tell you, _Ad portam rigidos calces extendit_, that he is Dead and Buried, and by this time no Puny among the mighty Nations of the Dead; for tho' he left this World not very many Days past, yet every Hour you know largely addeth unto that dark Society; and considering the incessant Mortality of Mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole Earth so few as a thousand an Hour. Altho' at this distance you had no early Account or Particular of his Death; yet your Affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret Sense or Intimation thereof by Dreams, thoughtful Whisperings, Mercurisms, Airy Nuncio's, or sympathetical Insinuations, which many seem to have had at the Death of their dearest Friends: for since we find in that famous Story, that Spirits themselves were fain to tell their Fellows at a distance, that the great _Antonio_ was dead; we have a sufficient Excuse for our Ignorance in such Particulars, and must rest content with the common Road, and _Appian_ way of Knowledge by Information. Tho' the uncertainty of the End of this World hath confounded all Human Predictions; yet they who shall live to see the Sun and Moon darkned, and the Stars to fall from Heaven, will hardly be deceiv'd in the Advent of the last Day; and therefore strange it is, that the common Fallacy of consumptive Persons, who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their Friends in perfect Health and Judgment. That you should be so little acquainted with _Plautus's_ sick Complexion, or that almost an _Hippocratical_ Face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair of his Continuation in such an emaciated State, wherein medical Predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute Diseases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenc'd by a Physician as a Judge. Upon my first Visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all Hopes of his Recovery, that in my sad Opinion he was not like to behold a Grashopper, much less to pluck another Fig; and in no long time after seem'd to discover that odd mortal Symptom in him not mention'd by _Hippocrates_, that is, to lose his own Face, and look like some of his near Relations; for he maintain'd not his proper Countenance, but look'd like his Uncle, the Lines of whose Face lay deep and invisible in his healthful Visage before: For as from our beginning we run through Variety of Looks, before we come to consistent and setled Faces; so before our End, by sick and languishing alterations, we put on new Visages: and in our Retreat to Earth, may fall upon such Looks which from Community of seminal Originals were before latent in us.