Thomas Beddoes to an Unidentified Correspondent, [22–23 December] 1797 [fragment]
I am pressed, in a manner not to be resisted, to set off for Italy to see Lambton, whom the Italian doctors have suffered almost to die of an ague. If no fresh letters arrive forbidding me, we shall start for Hamburgh the week after next.
[Stock summarises:] He then adverts to his intended chemical lectures, and to his other literary and scientific plans; observing that they would be only suspended, not finally abandoned, in consequence of his intended journey. Before closing the letter, however, he announces that his departure was no longer necessary. He had, that instant, received the melancholy intelligence, of Mr. Lambton’s death. He pronounces a short but emphatic eulogium upon him; ‘he is dead,’ he observes, ‘the best man that I ever knew, or, that in his sphere of life, I ever shall know.’
Published: Stock, p. 150.