468 memoirs of brigadier 'Kesen. April ii. 



which he tdok unknown to his physician, and to his 

 infinite alarm, as by no means entering into his cal- 

 culation. But the sailor of Louis xiv. and Peter the 

 Great, had the pleasure of laughing at his doctor on 

 his feet, the fourth day after his fright, and of telling 

 him, in Englifli *, that his practical calculations were 

 all made on feeble landmen of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, but did not apply to a son of Neptune of the 

 seventeenth, particularly to a Norwegian, who had 

 his elder sist«r, Mrs Chaplet, at the age of an hun- 

 dred and eleven years, eating meat suppers at Cron- 

 stadt, after burying two generations. This curious 

 circumstance was confirmed to your correspondent 

 by Mr Booker, Britilb agent at that sea port, her next 

 door neighbour, who said these suppers consisted of 

 sour cabbage, and sausages, or ham, in the German 

 stile. 



The commodore survived his pleurisy two years, 

 frequenting, as formerly, the court and tables of the no- 

 bility, till, in 1787, a singular circumstance put a sud- 

 den period to a life so uncommonly vigorous, that it 

 would have been difficult to prognosticate when such 

 a machine would have ceased to act, without some 

 uncommonly violent derangement. 



This was an unexpected visit from an old superan-' 

 Tiuated colonel of marines, whom the commodore had not 

 seen for forty years, and thought long since dead ; the 

 joy that such a meeting created in the two ancient ftiip 

 mates was highly natural, and the tender scene of con- 

 gratulations, inquiries, stories, t;?<r. was prolonged un^. 

 -xW tlie commodore, finding himself taiat and fatigued^ 



* His physician was an EngUnimiiv. 



