LETTER XLIX.

Colonel CODRINGTON to Dr. CHARLETT.

Vindication of his Conduct towards Mr. Creech.

SIR,

THE same good natured people who would represent us unkind to Mr. Creech, since his death, very probably are some of those who would have had us believed too partial in his favour whilst alive; but fair dealing is what we are not to expect till men learn to be reasonable and equitable. This I must own I have long since despaired of, after some experience of, and more reflection on, mankind, and therefore I content myself to despise what I cannot prevent. My calmness will never be ruffled, nor my conduct directed, by other people's whimsies; but by my own notions, so that I leave the men of supposition to opine as much and as impertinently as they please. I never said or did any thing to Mr. Creech, which I wished unsaid or undone till I received your's. I used the liberty and did the duty of a friend; but my sincerity was illtimed. Had I received any light, or the least hint from you or any other of his friends of the disorder you mention, I should have talked to him of his health more than his reputation, and have carried him to Tunbridge rather than have sent him to Oxford. I was not a stranger to

Mr. Creech's caprice, but I used to account for it by another principle. I thought him humourous and particular, but I never feared him mad.

He seemed to me to have worn off all the false and perhaps a little of the true delicacy of reputation, and to indulge his own inclinations, in contempt of public opinion, rather than sacrifice the least share of his indolence to the concern of what would, or what would not, be said of him. This I thought was the source of some incertainties in his conduct; but whilst he humoured his fantasque in trifles only, I neither thought it humane to pique him, nor decent to give advice to one from whom I ought rather to receive it. His engagement to the world for an edition of Justin M. was a case to be excepted. His interest and honour were wholly at stake,

self obliged to speak home.

and I thought myWhether I had or

had not, I fear the consequence would have been the same sooner or later, for the malady it seems was inveterate before I knew it had a beginning. I am very well satisfied his wretched end was the effect of his disorder and not of his principles, both by what I knew of him before, and by a circumstance I am assured of since his death, that in his Whitsunday Sermon at his parish, he mentioned self murther as somewhat like the Sin against the Holy Ghost, not to be repented of and therefore unpardonable. I trust in God's

mercy he finds himself an exception. He was not reasonable and therefore not accountable.

I never heard a syllable of your desire to speak with me at Oxford, nor of your having been to see me at London. Mr. Creech did indeed, at my desire, promise me the favour of company at dinner.

your

Mr. Creech's desire of money from me was, as you say, most certainly an effect of his distemper, and not of any particular design, much less of want in general. He repeated to me with a strange concern two or three times, Col. without your favour I cannot subsist, I cannot subsist.' I take God to witness I asked him these following questions, is the sum to pay away for any past occasion? He answered, No. Is it to print the Justin yourself? No, four Oxford booksellers have undertaken it. I then told him, since it was to support him only, it would equally serve his turn to receive it at different payments; he said, yes. I immediately writ him a note on my agent for 401. payable at sight, told him he should receive 601. more at Oxford in about six weeks or two months, and if the person whọ owed it me did not pay it then, Mr. Cary should; that sometime after he should receive 201. which with 301. he had owed me five or six years would make up the sum, and that if he had further occasion, six months after he should have 50%. more.

He seemed very well pleased, and said his heart was now at ease. Yet the next morning, as if nothing had passed between us, he came to me by seven o'clock, and very pressingly asked for an hundred pounds. I told him two gentlemen owed me an hundred pounds each, and if they paid it to me as they had promised me a week before, I could serve him without breaking my sum which I had an indispensable occasion for; he said, he would come to me again in the evening. One was gone out of town, and the other put me off till the 25th of June, which I told Creech that night, and again asked him, if he had a present occasion for the money, and assured him I would break my sum to assist him, he answered, No, it was only to subsist him. He then desired notes from me payable upon sight. I told him that would break my measures worse than the other, for it would make me a debtor to such as he should transfer the notes to, but I would regulate the payments just as he should desire and give my directions accordingly to Mr. Cary. He had my bill of 401. in his pocket at his death, and Mr. Caswell can tell you what I desired him to tell Creech in relation to the other. I could not forbear mentioning the oddness of this conduct to Mrs. Bull, and we both concluded there was a mystery in it he did not think fit to reveal. Since I am upon this unhappy subject I will clear my thoughts of it at once and discharge it for ever.

When Mr. Creech first promised us a Justin M. he did not, I fancy, propose to himself so much business as was afterwards cut out for him. Justin was his hero. He had read him much and carefully, corrected the text in many places, and the translation in more, this with a pompous dissertation or two on the great qualities of his author, and slight account of the conjuncture in which he writ, with some critical notes on the text, he thought was all his task, and would furnish out an edition. When he received the L'Abbè Longuerue's Life of Justin and had read it slightly over, I asked him how it answered. He answered, it was not a fair account but a downThe Abbe right scurrilous lampoon on him. would change nothing, said he could justify what he had advanced, and desired Mr. Creech might take what liberties he pleased with his dissertation provided he printed it verbatim. Dr. Creech sometime after confessed to me the Abbè was better founded than he had at first imagined, and I guess he began to be convinced he was to change most of his views and be more accurate in the history of those times than he had thought himself obliged to be.

These new diffi

culties came upon him at a time when he was not fit to encounter them, encreased his disorder, and ended his life, the loss of which no man can regret more than myself on the public account as well as from my particular friendship to him.