The relapse, by which, not three weeks after this meeting, the Earl again lost his senses, had two current reports for its cause: the first of which gave it to a fall from his horse; the second to the sudden death of Mrs. Turk, his erst lovely Patty; “to whom,” says the Doctor, in a letter, after his Ereswell visit, that was addressed to Mrs. Phillips, “he was more attached than ever, from her faithful and affectionate attendance upon him during the long season of his insanity; though, at this time, she was become a fat and rather coarse old woman.”
Dr. Burney was of opinion that to both these circumstances, since one of them quickly followed the other, this last fatal seizure might be owing. Its prompt termination left the good, infirm, and far older Mr. Hayes a sorrowing, but not a long survivor.
Dr. Burney mourned for both; for Lord Orford with true concern—for Mr. Hayes with lasting regret.
Mr. Hayes bequeathed to Dr. Burney a finely chosen and beautifully bound collection of books, among which were several works of great price and rarity; to which was joined a valuable case of coins and medals. And the Doctor’s eldest son, Captain Burney, who from a boy had been known and loved by Mr. Hayes, was worthily named, by that excellent friend, his general heir and residuary legatee.
In speaking of this last event in a letter to Mrs. Phillips, the Doctor says: “I have been so melancholy as to be unwilling to communicate my _lâcheté_ to you, who, I hope, are in better spirits. The death of my worthy and affectionate friend, Hayes, though I gain a charming collection of books by it, fills me with sorrow every time I look at them. Thirty years ago, such a bequest would have made me mad with joy; but now, alas! my literary curiosity and wants lie in a smaller compass. I was already in possession of the best books he has left me, though in worn editions and worse bindings; and as for the rest, my gain is merely nominal: for our books have been so much in common during more than thirty years, that his were mine and mine were his, as much as our own. We had only to stretch out our hands a little further, when we wanted what were distant. How much harder is such a friend to find than such books, scarce, and really valuable as are many of them!”