Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/184

The versatility and pertinacity which this letter exhibits, and the fund of humour which enriched an otherwise serious nature and enabled him to see the comic side of events and to laugh over his own failures, were the gifts which enabled him to surmount his various troubles. He builds houses in London and Dublin; reads papers before the Royal Society; keeps up his interest in medicine; commences a metaphysical treatise; plunges deeply into political economy; not only translates the Psalms into Latin verse, but also what he irreverently termed 'the catterwouling songs' of Sir Peter Pett of the Board of Admiralty, one of his colleagues on the Council of the Royal Society; writes a quantity of good Latin and bad English original verse; builds a new kind of chariot, not to mention the 'double bottom;' and does all these things in the intervals of his endless suits with the farmers of the revenue, and the battle with Lord Kingston, besides keeping up a large private correspondence. He gets a 'custodium' of his lands in Kerry, and 'is gone,' Lady Petty despairingly writes to Sir Robert Southwell, 'upon the unlucky place himself; which she is very sorry for, considering how unfit he is to ride in such dangerous places.'^[1] He draws up schemes for the education of his own children and for Southwell's son Edward; he dabbles in theology, and consoles himself in dreamy and rather mystical speculations on the character and nature of the Deity, for the terrestrial troubles which he suffers owing to 'there being always some devilish enemy, who sows tares amongst the corn at night.'^[2] His old habit of mimicry was also an unfailing source of consolation; and he could not resist falling back upon it notwithstanding his constant resolves to abandon a practice too dangerous for unsettled times. He could speak 'now like a grave orthodox divine; then falling into the Presbyterian way; then to Fanatical, to Quaker, to Monk, and to Friar, and to Popish Priest,' all of which Evelyn declares 'he did with such admirable action and alteration of voice and tone, as it was not possible to abstain from wonder, and one would sweare to heare severall persons, or forbear to think he was not

1. Aug. 11, 1683.
2. To Southwell, April 1684.