the day came that they thought to have taken the Dutch fleet in the port of Bergen, Mr Montague, though he had such a strong prefage in his mind of his approaching death, yet he generously staid all the while in the place of greatest danger. The other gentleman fignalized his courage in a moft undaunted manner till the end of the action, when he fell on a sudden into such a trembling that he could fcarce stand; and, Mr Montague going to him to hold him up, as they were in each other's arms, a cannonball killed him outright, and carried away Mr Montague's belly, fo that he died within an hour after. The earl of Rochefter told me that these presages they had in their minds made fome impreffion on him, that there were separated 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 unreafonable thing for him to think, that beings in another state are not under fuck laws and limits that they could not command their own motions but as the Supreme Power fhould 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 presage 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 should 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 thefe muft foon die, one of the young ladies pointed to him that he was to die. He, remembering his dream, fell into fome diforder; 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 said, made him inclined to believe the foul was a fubftance diftinct 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 firft 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 said his reafon and judgment were so clear and strong, that from thence he was fully perfuaded that death was

not

not the spending or diffolution of the foul, but only the feparation of it from matter. He had in that fickness great remorses 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 so as to waste his strength fo foon, or that he had brought fuch an ill name upon himself; 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 faid 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 Supreme Being, he had always fome impression of one; and professed often to me, that he had never known an entire atheist, who fully believed there was no God.

Yet, when he explained

amounted to no more

his notion of this Being, it than a vaft power, that had none of the attributes of goodness 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 chofen fometimes 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 as their profeffing and fwearing friendship where they hated mortally; their oaths and imprecations 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 ufage 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 these courses, 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 courfe of many years which had almoft quite extinguifhed 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 saying there were fome people that could not be kept in order or admonished but in this way. I replied, that

it

it might be granted that a grave way of fatire was fometimes no improfitable way of reproof; yet they, who used it only out of spite, 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 men's throats who had never offended him; and he faid the lies in these libels came often in as ornaments that could not be spared without spoiling the beauty of the poem.

For his other ftudies, 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 shall but just 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,

B 3