An excellent, however uneasy lesson, Mowbray! said I.--By my faith it is!
It may one day, who knows how soon? be our own case!

I thought of thy yawning-fit, as described in thy letter of Aug. 13. For
up started Mowbray, writhing and shaking himself as in an ague-fit; his
hands stretched over his head--with thy hoy! hoy! hoy! yawning. And then
recovering himself, with another stretch and a shake, What's o'clock?
cried he; pulling out his watch--and stalking by long tip-toe strides
through the room, down stairs he went; and meeting the maid in the
passage, I heard him say--Betty, bring me a bumper of claret; thy poor
master, and this d----d Belford, are enough to throw a Hercules into the
vapours.

Mowbray, after this, assuming himself in our friend's library, which is,
as thou knowest, chiefly classical and dramatical, found out a passage in
Lee's Oedipus, which he would needs have to be extremely apt; and in he
came full fraught with the notion of the courage it would give the dying
man, and read it to him. 'Tis poetical and pretty. This is it:

When the sun sets, shadows that show'd at noon
But small, appear most long and terrible:
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds:
Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death;
Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons:
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves.
Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus;
While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff,
And sweat with our imagination's weight.