they know they shall be mastered, and murder where they can with safety. This, my lord, is the character of a courtier without wit; and therefore that which is a satire to other men, must be a panegyric to your lordship, who are a master of it. If the least of these reflections could have reached your person, no necessity of mine could have made me to have sought so earnestly, and so long, to have cultivated your kindness. As a poet, I cannot but have made some observations on mankind; the lowness of my fortune has not yet brought me to flatter vice; and it is my duty to give testimony to virtue. It is true, your lordship is not of that nature which either seeks a commendation, or wants it. Your mind has always been above the wretched affectation of popularity. A popular man is, in truth, no better than a prostitute to common fame, and to the people. He lies down to every one he meets for the hire of praise; and his humility is only a disguised ambition. Even Cicero himself, whose eloquence deserved the admiration of mankind, yet, by his insatiable thirst of fame, he has lessened his character with succeeding ages; his action against Catiline may be said to have ruined the consul, when it saved the city; for it so swelled his soul, which was not truly great, that ever afterwards it was apt to be overset with vanity. And this made his virtue so suspected by his friends, that Brutus, whom of all men he adored, refused him a place in his conspiracy. A modern wit has made this observation on him; that, coveting to recommend himself to posterity, he begged it as an alms of all his friends, the historians, to re member his consulship: And observe, if you please, the oddness of the event; all their histories are lost, and the vanity of his request stands yet recorded in his own writings. How much more great and manly in your lordship, is your contempt of popular applause, and your retired virtue, which shines only to a few; with whom you live so easily and freely, that you make it evident, you have a soul which is capable of all the tenderness of friendship, and that you only retire yourself from those, who are not capable of returning it. Your kindness, where you have once placed it, is inviolable; and it is to that only I attribute my happiness in your love. This makes me more easily forsake an argument, on which I could otherwise delight to dwell; I mean your judgment in your choice of friends; because I have the honour to be one. After which I am sure you will more easily permit me to be silent, in the care you have taken of my fortune; which you have rescued, not only from the power of others, but from my worst of enemies, my own modesty and laziness; which favour, had it been employed on a more deserving subject, had been an effect of justice in your nature; but, as placed on me, is only charity. Yet, withal, it is conferred on such a man, as prefers your kindness itself, before any of its consequences; and who values, as the greatest of your favours, those of your love, and of your conversation. From this constancy to your friends, I might reasonably assume, that your resentments would be as strong and lasting, if they were not restrained by a nobler principle of good-nature and generosity; for certainly, it is the same composition of mind, the same resolution and courage, which makes the greatest friendships and the greatest enmities. And he, who is too lightly reconciled, after high provocations, may recommend himself to the world for a Christian, but I should hardly trust him for a friend. The Italians have a proverb to that purpose," To forgive the first time, shews me a good Catholic; the second time, a fool." To this firmness in all your actions, though you are wanting in no other ornaments of mind and body, yet to this I principally ascribe the interest your merits have acquired you in the royal family. A prince, who is constant to himself, and steady in all his undertakings; one with whom that character of Horace will agree, Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinæ ;—* such an one cannot but place an esteem, and repose a confidence on him, whom no adversity, no change of courts, no bribery of interests, or cabals of factions, or advantages of fortune, can remove from the solid foundations of honour and fidelity: Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores How well your lordship will deserve that praise, I need no inspiration to foretel. You have already left no room for prophecy: Your early undertakings have been such, in the service of your king and country, when you offered yourself to the most dangerous employment, that of the sea; when you chose to abandon those delights, to which your youth and fortune did invite you, to undergo the hazards, and, which was worse, the company of common seamen, that you have made it evident, you will refuse no opportunity of rendering yourself useful to the nation, when either your courage or conduct shall be required. The same zeal and faith * On perusing such ill applied flattery, I know not whether we ought to feel most for Charles II. or for Dryden. + The Earl of Mulgrave, in the Dutch war of 1672, served as a volunteer on board the Victory, commanded by the Earl of Ossory. He behaved with distinguished courage himself, and has borne witness to that of his unfortunate admiral, James Duke of fulness continue in your blood, which animated one of your noble ancestors to sacrifice his life in the quarrels of his sovereign; though, I hope, both for your sake, and for the public tranquillity, the same occasion will never be offered to your lordship, and that a better destiny will attend you. But I make haste to consider you as abstracted from a court, which (if you will give me leave to use a term of logic) is only an adjunct, not a propriety of happiness. The Academics, I confess, were willing to admit the goods of fortune into their notion of felicity; but I do not remember, that any of the sects of old philosophers did ever leave a room for greatness. Neither am I formed to praise à court, who admire and covet nothing, but the easiness and quiet of retirement. I naturally withdraw my sight from a precipice; and, admit the prospect be never so large and goodly, can take no pleasure even in looking on the downfall, though I am secure from the danger. York. His intrepid coolness appears from a passage in his Memoirs, containing the observations he made during the action, on the motion of cannon bullets in the recoil, and their effect when passing near the human body. His bravery was rewarded by his promotion to command the Katharine, the second best ship in the fleet. This vessel had been captured by the Dutch during the action, but was retaken by the English crew before she could be carried into harbour. Lord Mulgrave had a picture of the Katharine at his house in St James's Park.-See CARLETON'S Memoirs, p. 5. + In 1548-9, there were insurrections in several counties of England, having for their object the restoration of the Catholic religion, and the redress of grievances. The insurgents in Northamptonshire were 20,000 strong, headed by one Ket, a tanner, who possessed himself of Norwich. The Earl of Northampton, marching rashly and hastily against him, at the head of a very inferior force, was defeated with loss. In the rout Lord Sheffield, ancestor of the Earl of Mulgrave, and the person alluded to in the text, fell with his horse into a ditch, and was slain by a butcher with a club. The rebels were afterwards defeated by the Earl of Warwick.-DUGDALE's Baron. vol. ii. p. 386. HOLLINSHED, p. 1035. Methinks, there is something of a malignant joy in that excellent description of Lucretius; Suave, mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis, I am sure his master Epicurus, and my better master Cowley, preferred the solitude of a garden, and the conversation of a friend, to any consideration, so much as a regard, of those unhappy people, whom, in our own wrong, we call the great. True greatness, if it be any where on earth, is in a private vir tue, removed from the notion of pomp and vanity, confined to a contemplation of itself, and centering on itself: Omnis enim per se Divûm natura necesse est Ipsa suis pollens opibus.* If this be not the life of a deity, because it cannot consist with Providence, it is, at least, a god-like life. I can be contented, (and I am sure I have your lordship of my opinion) with an humbler station in the temple of virtue, than to be set on the pinnacle of it: The entire passage of Lucretius is somewhat different from this quotation: Qua bene, et eximie quamvis disposta ferantur, LIB. II. Dryden ingeniously applies, to the calm of philosophical retirement, the Epicurean tranquillity of the Deities of Lucretius. |