E

a statesman, and so on; and yet he carried so many and so different connexions in his head all at the same time."

"Lord Peterborough was not near so great a genius as Lord Bolingbroke. They were quite unlike. Lord Peterborough, to instance in the case just mentioned, would say pretty and lively things in his letters, but they would be rather too gay and wandering; whereas, was Lord Bolingbroke to write to the emperor or to the statesman, he would fix on that point which was the most material, would set it in the strongest and finest light, and manage it so as to make it the most serviceable to his purpose.”

Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, was noted for self-complacency, which he appears to have hugged to the last moments of his existence, and to have imagined he could carry with him to the grave. Pope relates this of him:

I paid Sir Godfrey Kneller a visit but two days before he died, and I think I never saw a scene of so much vanity in my life. He was lying in his bed, and contemplating the plan he had made for his own monument. He said many gross things in relation to himself, and the memory he should leave behind him. He said he should not like to lie among the rascals at Westminster. A memorial there would be sufficient; and he desired me to write an epitaph for it. I did so afterwards; and I think it is the worst thing I ever wrote in my life."

How strangely do some men overrate their own worth, and how very differently do good judges estimate it! This may be illustrated, by comparing the preceding with the following anecdote, which is taken from the supplement in Singer's edition, and rests on the authority of Dr. Warburton.

"Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, (a Guinea trader,) came in. Nephew,' said Sir Godfrey, you have the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world.' I don't know how great you may be, said the Guinea-man, but I don't like your looks: I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."

We shall add to our selection one or two of the miscellaneous articles.

"When the celebrated Father Bourdaloue, who has sometimes been called the French Tillotson, was to preach on a Good Friday, and the proper officer came to attend him to church, his servants said the father was in his study, and if he pleased, he might go up to him. In going up stairs, he heard the sound of a violin; and, as the door stood a little a-jar, saw Bourdaloue stripped into his cassock, playing a good brisk tune, and dancing to it about his study. He was extremely concerned, for he esteemed that great man highly, and thought he must be run distracted. However, at last he ventured to rap gently at the door. The father immediately laid down his fiddle, hurried on his gown, and came to him; and, with his usual composed pleasing look, said, 'O, Sir, is it you? I hope I have not made you stay; and am ready to attend you.' The poor man, as they were going down, could not help mentioning his surprise at what he had heard and seen. Bourdaloue smiled, and said, Indeed, you might well be a little surprised, if you do not know any thing of my way on these occasions; but the whole of the matter was this: In thinking on the subject of the day, I found my spirits too much depressed to speak as I ought to do; so I had recourse to my usual method of music, and a little motion. It has had its effect: I am quite in a proper temper, and go now with pleasure to what else I should have gone in pain." LORD BOLINGBROKE.

What we have next to give, is a piece of intelligence worthy of being preserved on various accounts, and not the less, because

it is to the credit of a character, which has seldom been favourably represented in history.

"The Jews offered my Lord Godolphin to pay five hundred thousand pounds, (and they would have made it a million,) if the government would allow them to purchase the town of Brentford, with leave of settling there entirely, with full privileges of trade, &c.? The agent from the Jews said, that the affair was already concerted with the chief of their brethren abroad; that it would bring the richest of their merchants hither, and of course an addition of above twenty millions of money to circulate in the nation. Lord Molesworth was in the room with Lord Godolphin, when this proposal was made; and as soon as the agent was gone, pressed him to close with it. Lord Godolphin was not of his opinion. He foresaw that it would provoke two of the most powerful bodies in the nation, the clergy and the merchants; he gave other reasons too against it; and, in fine, it was dropped."

"The Jews had better success with Oliver Cromwell, when they desired leave to have a synagogue in London. They offered him, when Protector, £ 60,000 for that privilege. Cromwell appointed them a day for his giving them an answer. He then sent to some of the most powerful among the clergy, and some of the chief merchants of the city, to be present at their meeting. It was in the long gallery at Whitehall. Sir Paul Ricaut, who was then a young man, passed in among the crowd, and said he never heard a man speak so well in his life as Cromwell did on the occasion. When they were all met, he ordered the Jews to speak for themselves. After that, he turn. ed to the clergy, who inveighed much against the Jews, as a cruel and accursed people. Cromwell, in his answer to the clergy, called them men of God;' and desired to be informed by them, whether it was not their opinion, that the Jews were to be called, in the fulness of the time, into the church. He then desired to know, whether it was not every Christian man's duty to forward that good end all he could. Then he flourished a good deal on religion prevailing in this nation, the only place in the world where religion was taught in its full purity; was it not then our duty, in particular, to encourage them to settle where they could be taught the truth; and not to exclude them from the light, and leave them among false teachers, papists, and idolaters? This si lenced the clergy. He then turned to the merchants, who spoke of their falseness and meanness, and that they would get their trade from them. And can you really be afraid,' says he, that this mean despised people should be able to prevail in trade and credit over the merchants of England, the noblest and most esteemed merchants of the whole world?' Thus he went on till he had silenced them too, and so was at liberty to grant what he desired to the Jews.' LOCKIER, (who had this last from Sir Paul Ricaut himself, as he had the former from Lord Molesworth.")

Dr. Johnson derives the familiar word bumper from bump, awkwardly enough we think. Its etymology is at least ingeniously given by a foreigner, whom Spence met with at Florence, Dr. Cocchi.

"When the English were good Catholics, they usually drank the Pope's health in a full glass every day after dinner-au bon pere: whence your word bumper.”

We conclude with a few short pieces from the Supplement in Mr. Singer's edition.

66

Upon somebody complaining of the sufferings of women; Dr. Arbuthnot said, Yes, the ladies' suffer greatly in some particulars, but there is not one of you that un dergoes the torture of being shaved three times a week."" MALLET.

DR.

"Lord Bolingbroke's father said to him on his being made a lord, Ah, Harry, I ever said you would be hanged, but now I find you will be beheaded." " YOUNG.

"When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock? He answered, that he could not calculate the madness of the people." LORD RADNOR.

"Ambrose Phillips was a neat dresser, and very vain. In a conversation between him, Congreve, Swift, and others, the discourse ran a good while on Julius Cæsar. After many things had been said to the purpose, Ambrose asked what sort of person they supposed Julius Cæsar was? He was answered, that from medals, &c. it appeared that he was a small man, and thin-faced. Now, for my part,' said Ambrose, I should take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress, and five feet seven inches high.'-an exact description of Phillips himself. Swift, who understood good breeding perfectly well, and would not interrupt any body while speaking, let him go on, and when he had quite done, said: And I, Mr. Phillips, should take him to have been a plump man, just five feet five inches high; not very well dressed, in a black gown with pudding-sleeves." DR. YOUNG.

"Lord Granville had long wanted to pass an evening with Mr. Pope: when he at last did so, Mr. Pope said that the few hours were wholly taken up by his lordship, in debating and settling, how the first verse in the Eneid was to be pronounced; and whether we should say Cicero or Kicero! This is what is meant in the two lines inserted in the Dunciad, on those learned topics. DR. WARBURTON.

"Old Cibber's brother, at Winchester College, in Dr. Young's time, was reckoned ingenious as well as loose; his conduct was so immoral, that even Colley used to reprove him. His varying at school,

Quam pulchrum est digito monstrari, et dicier hic est ;

Hic mihi, quam mæste vox sonat ille fuit.

He was a vile rake afterwards, and in the greatest distress; Colley used to reprove him for it. He told Dr. Sim, Burton, on a visit, that he did not know any sin he had not been guilty of but one, which was avarice; and if the Doctor would give him a guinea, he would do his utmost to be guilty of that too." DR. YOUNG.

Quid dices de me quando reverteris in patriam tuam 2" said Dr. King, (with an air of anxious and proud expectation,) to a Swede, who had resided in Oxford some time for his studies. "Dicam, insignissime Vir,-Te esse magnum Grammaticum," said the Swede. The doctor turned away quite mortified and chop-fallen." MR. HOOKE, Junr,

ART. VII.-The Life of William Lord Russell, with some Account of the Times in which he lived. By LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 4to. Pp. xvi. 329. London, Longman & Co. 1819. THIS is a life of one of the purest and best patriots, and worthiest men, that England, or any other country, ever produced, -written by his descendant, who may well be proud of so illustrious an ancestor. It is indeed refreshing to turn from the ordinary scenes of history, and the equivocal or guilty characters with which they abound, to the contemplation of so fine a model of public and private virtue, which it is impossible to study without sensible improvement of the heart, and without feeling our sentiments of the dignity of human nature itself enlarged and exalted. And when it is remembered that this story, besides the real dignity with which it is invested by the pervading presence of the most unsullied virtue in all its details, is also full of every thing that can interest the affections, and closes with a tragedy deep and touching as any that was ever imagined by

the genius of fiction; we know not of any piece of biography which may reasonably be expected to command a deeper interest in the public mind. The generous and intrepid patriot, led out to martyrdom, and sacrificed to the vindictive profligacy of a corrupted court; the drooping genius of freedom, as this illustrious man paid the penalty of his virtues on the scaffold, and the majesty with which she soon afterwards rose triumphant, as it were, from his ashes:-such are the pictures which this eventful passage of history suggests to the imagination and the heart, and which can lose their interest only with the extinction of British liberty.

The period too, as well as the hero of this performance, has peculiar claims to our regard: it is at once pregnant with instruction, and prolific of associations, in which are mingled much of the pride, as well as the shame, which is excited by reviewing the past history of our country. It was in the preceding reign that the genius of England seemed to have awakened almost for the first time from the torpor of ages, and that it ushered in by a stormy dawn, the spirit of liberty, of which other generations were to witness the meridian splendour. It was in the struggles of the parliament-fiercely and foully as they were too often conducted against the encroachments of prerogative, that the high and lofty bearing of the English mind was first announced, and the future destiny of a great nation was irrevocably determined. Civil war arose-proscriptions ensued -usurpation triumphed-despotism was restored! but throughout all these feverish vicissitudes, the one mighty and generous principle of freedom kept its hold of the national mind, and advanced in silence and seclusion till the era of its triumphant developement arrived. No one can doubt the iniquity of the proceedings of the parliament towards Charles I. and the usurpation of Cromwell has been condemned by the voice of history; but the enthusiastic spirit which had been previously generating throughout the land, and which took alternately the shape of religious fanaticism and political frenzy, was still a far nobler spirit than the cold servility which preceded it; and after having been drawn forth, and exercised in the atrocious scenes which we have named, was slowly purified into that fine and generous sentiment of liberty, to which we owe all that is august in our constitution, and all that is most brilliant in our history. In minds of a higher and more generous mould-and has been the peculiar privilege of England to abound at all es in such characters-the love of liberty, which fermented ng her more vulgar population till it run over in the atrocif regicide and revolution, soon assumed a calmer but a more

intrepid aspect, and, after having cleared its majestic way betwixt the insolence of power, on the one hand, and the license of rebellion, on the other, it succeeded in laying the foundations of that structure to which all ages will look with respect and awe. It was while this difficult movement was going forward, while the real hereditary rank and patriotism of England were engaged in setting bounds to the insolence of the most dissolute and despicable of her monarchs, that Lord. Russell came forward upon the great theatre of public affairs; and, after relinquishing for the public good that domestic happiness of which he was in such full possession, and for which he of all men had the deepest relish, intrepidly sacrificed life itself for his country.

Of all the periods of our English history, we confess that the reign of Charles II. and of his unhappy brother, is that of which the perusal fills our minds with the most profound disgust. Nothing, at once so coarse and so profligate, as the court of Charles, has existed in this, or perhaps in any other country. Of this vast circle of vulgar dissipation, the monarch himself was the degraded centre. If there were principle in any part of his policy, it must be sought for in his apparently systematic attempts to obliterate the moral and intellectual character of his people. Even the prevailing vices of the English were to lose their vigorous and passionate character, and to become heartless, unblushing, and systematic. The old native literature of England, so congenial to the spirit and honourable to the genius of her people, was repudiated by the shallow fastidiousness of a court of pedantic libertines, to whom nothing was interesting that spoke to the higher powers of intellect, or communed with the deeper workings of the heart. A cold, feeble, unimpressive, although sparkling style of composition, took place of the pure and majestic energy of English thought and feeling; the massive and invaluable diamond of our native literature was relegated to darkness and oblivion. The same spirit which led the monarch and his alien satellites to neglect the literature of England, made them also despise its liberties; the same royal and polished critics, to whom Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, appeared barbarians, made repeated attempts to barter away to a foreign despot the independence of this great country.

There was about Charles II. nothing great or princely or magnanimous nothing that discovered either energy of mind or dignity of soul; and passing over his amours, of which the indecorum was yet more flagrant than the profligacy, we cannot remember with other feelings than those of abhorrence his foolish, false, and dastardly course of policy, or pardon to