ball killed him outright, and carried away Mr. Montague's belly, fo that he died within an hour after. The earl of Rochester told me that these presages they had in their minds made fome impreffion on him, that there were feparated beings; and that the foul, either by a natural fagacity or fome fecret notice communicated to it, had a fort of divination. But that gentleman's never appearing was a great fnare to him during the rest of his life; though, when he told me this, he could not but acknowledge it was an unreasonable thing for him to think, that beings in another state are not under fuch laws and limits that they could not command their own motions but as the Supreme Power should order them; and that one, who had fo corrupted the natural principles of truth as he had, had no reafon to expect that fuch an extraordinary thing fhould be done for his conviction.

He told me of another odd prefage that one had of his approaching death in the lady Warre's, his mother-in-law's, houfe. The chaplain had dreamt that fuch a day he fhould die; but, being by all the family put out of the belief of it, he had almost forgot it; till, the evening before, at fupper, there being thirteen at table, according to a fond conceit that one of these must foon die, one of the young la

dies pointed to him that he was to die. He, remembering his dream, fell into fome disorder; and, the lady Warre reproving him for his fuperftition, he faid he was confident he was to die before morning; but, he being in perfect health, it was not much minded. It was Saturday night, and he was to preach next day. He went to his chamber, and fat up late, as appeared by the burning of his candle; and he had been preparing his notes for his fermon; but was found dead in his bed the next morning. These things, he faid, made him inclined to believe the foul was a substance distinct from matter; and this often returned into his thoughts. But that which perfected his perfuafion about it was, that, in the ficknefs which brought him fo near death before I first knew him, when his fpirits were fo low and spent that he could not move nor ftir, and he did not think to live an hour, he faid his reason and judgement were fo clear and strong, that from thence he was fully perfuaded that death was not the fpending or diffolution of the foul, but only the feparation of it from matter. He had in that fickness great remorfes for his past life; but he afterwards told me, they were rather general and dark horrors than any conviction of finning against God. He was forry he had lived fo as to wafte his ftrength fo

foon,

foon, or that he had brought fuch an ill name upon himfelf; and had an agony in his mind about it which he knew not well how to exprefs; but at fuch times, though he complied with his friends in fuffering divines to be fent for, he said he had no great mind to it, and that it was but a piece of his breeding to defire them to pray by him, in which he joined little himself.

As to the fupreme Being, he had always fome impreffion of one; and profeffed often to me, that he had never known an entire atheist, who fully believed there was no God. Yet, when he explained his notion of this Being, it amounted to no more than a vaft power, that had none of the attributes of goodnefs or justice we ascribe to the Deity. These were his thoughts about religion, as himself told me. For morality, he freely owned to me, that, though he talked of it as a fine thing, yet this was only because he thought it a decent mode of speaking; and that, as they went always in clothes, though in their frolics they would have chosen sometimes to have gone naked, if they had not feared the people, fo fome of them found it neceffary, for human life, to talk of morality, yet he confeffed they cared not for it, farther than the reputation of it was neceffary for their credit and affairs; of which he gave me many

inftances:

1

inftances as their profeffing and fwearing friendship where they hated mortally; their oaths and impre- . cations on their addreffes to women, which they intended never to make good; the pleasure they took in defaming innocent perfons, and spreading false reports of fome, perhaps in revenge, because they could not engage them to comply with their ill defigns; the delight they had in making people quarrel ; their unjust usage of their creditors, and putting them off by any deceitful promise they could invent that might deliver them from prefent importunity. So that, in deteftation of thefe courfes, he would often break forth into fuch hard expreffions, concerning himself, as would be indecent for another to repeat.

Such had been his principles and practices in a course of many years, which had almost quite extinguished the natural propenfities in him to juftice and virtue. He would often go into the country, and be for fome months wholly employed in ftudy, or the fallies of his wit, which he came to direct chiefly to fatire. And this he often defended to me, by faying there were fome people that could not be kept in order or admonished but in this way. I replied, that it might be granted that a grave way of fatire was fometimes no improfitable way of reproof; yet

they,

they, who used it only out of fpite, and mixed lies with truth, fparing nothing that might adorn their poems or gratify their revenge, could not excuse that way of reproach by which the innocent often fuffer; fince the most malicious things, if wittily expreffed, might stick to and blemish the best men in the world; and the malice of a libel could hardly confift with the charity of an admonition. To this he answered, a man could not write with life unless he were heated by revenge; for, to write a fatire, without refentments, upon the cold notions of philofophy, was as if a man would in cold blood cut mens throats who had never offended him; and he faid the lies in thefe libels came often in as ornaments that could not be spared without spoiling the beauty of the poem.

For his other studies, they were divided between the comical and witty writings of the ancients and moderns, the Roman authors, and books of phyfic, which the ill ftate of health he was fallen into made more neceffary to himself, and which qualified him for an odd adventure which I fhall but juft mention. Being under an unlucky accident, which obliged him to keep out of the way, he disguised himself fo that his nearest friends could not have known him, and fet up, in Tower-ftreet, for an Italian mountebank,