TO DR. SHERIDAN.
I HAVE had your letter of the 19th, and expect, before you read this, to receive another from you with the most fatal news that can ever come to me, unless I should be put to death for some ignominious crime. I continue very ill with my giddiness and deafness, of which I had two days intermission, but since worse, and I shall be perfectly content if God shall please to call me away at this time. Here is a triple cord of friendship broke, which hath lasted thirty years, twenty-four of which in Ireland. I beg, if you have not writ to me before you get this, to tell me no particulars, but the event in general: my weakness, my age, my friendship will bear no more. I have mentioned the case as well as I knew it to a physician, who is my friend; and I find his methods were the same, air and exercise, and at last ass's milk. I will tell you sincerely, that if I were younger, and in health, or in hopes of it, I would endeavour to divert my mind by all methods in order to pass my life in quiet; but I now want only three months of sixty. I am strongly visted with a disease, that will at last cut me off, if I should this time escape; if not, I have but a poor remainder, and that is below any wise man's valuing. I do not intend to return to Ireland so soon as I purposed; I would not be there in the very midst of grief. I desire you will speak to Mr. Worrall to get a new license about the beginning of October, when my
