While justice, candour, equanimity, a zeal for the good of your country, and the most persuasive eloquence in bringing over others to it, are valuable distinctions, you are not to expect that the public will so far comply with your inclinations, as to forbear celebrating such extraordinary qualities. It is in vain that you have endeavoured to conceal your share of merit in the many national services which you have effected. Do what you will, the present age will be talking of your virtues, though posterity alone will do them justice.b Other men pass through oppositions and contending interests in the ways of ambition; but your great abilities have been invited to power, and importuned to accept of advancement. Nor is it strange that this should happen to your lordship, who could bring into the service of your sovereign the arts and policies of ancient Greece and Rome; as well as the most exact knowledge of our own constitution in particular, and of the interests of Europe in general; to which I must also add, a certain dignity in yourself, that (to say the least of it) has been always equal to those great honours which have been conferred upon you. It is very well known how much the church owed to you, in the most dangerous day it ever b Mr. Walpole, for one, has done them justice, in his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors. • This most dangerous day was June 29, 1688, the very day on which the seven bishops, who had been committed to the tower by that wicked chancellor, Jefferys, for modestly petitioning king James II. to excuse them from reading his declaration of his dispensing power in matters of 1760 saw, that of the arraignment of its prelates; and how far the civil power, in the late and present reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wisdom. But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your administration, would be a more proper work for an history, than for an address of this nature. Your lordship appears as great in your private life, as in the most important offices which you have borne. I would, therefore, rather choose to speak of the pleasure you afford all who are admitted to your conversation, of your elegant taste in religion, were tried in Westminster-hall, and acquitted, to the universal joy of the nation. In this famous trial, our author's patron, then only Mr. Somers, was one of the learned counsel for the bishops; and, for his noble defence of those prelates, who were then generally styled the 'seven golden candlesticks,' he was by king William made solicitor-general, May 7, 1689; then attorney-general, May 2, 1692; and lord keeper, 1693. April 21, 1697, he was created lord Somers, baron of Evesham, and made lord chancellor of England; from which post he was removed in 1700, and in 1701, impeached by the commons, but acquitted on his trial by the lords. He then retired to his studies, and was chosen president of the Royal Society. In 1706, he projected the union. In 1708, queen Anne made him lord president of the privy council: but, on the change of her ministry in 1710, he was also displaced. Towards the latter end of the queen's reign, he grew very infirm; which probably was the reason why he had no other post than a seat at the council-table at the accession of king George L. He died of an apoplectic fit, April 26, 1716, after having for some time unfortunately survived the powers of his understanding. This dedication gives a lively sketch of his character; but surely no man's was ever better depicted by a pen than this nobleman's is by Mr. Addison, iu that admirable paper, intitled The Freeholder, published on the 4th of May, (the day of his lordship's interment,) to which the curious are referred. His writings are too well known to need enumeration, and too numerous to be mentioned within the compass of a note. all the polite parts of learning, of your great humanity and complacency of manners, and of the surprising influence which is peculiar to you, in making every one who converses with your lordship prefer you to himself, without thinking the less meanly of his own talents. But if I should take notice of all that might be observed in your lordship, I should have nothing new to say upon any other character of distinction. I am, MY LORD, Your Lordship's most obedient, Most devoted humble Servant, THE SPECTATOR. DEDICATION* TO THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES, LORD HALIFAX." MY LORD, SIMILITUDE of manners and studies is usually mentioned as one of the strongest motives to affec * This dedication includes Nos. 81-169. ■ Charles Montague, grandson to an earl of Manchester, was taken much notice of at Cambridge, for his City and Country Mouse, a satire on Dryden. Being brought to court at the revolution, he was constituted one of the lords commissioners of the treasury, March 2, 1691-2; chancellor of the exchequer, in May 1694. The coin being exceedingly debased and diminished, he formed the design of calling in the money, and re-coining it, in 1695; which was effected in two years: to supply the immediate want of cash, he projected the issuing of exchequer-bills. For this service, he had the thanks of the house of commons in 1697. He was next year appointed first lord commissioner of the treasury; and resigning that post in June 1700, obtained a grant of the office of auditor of the receipt of the exchequer; and the same year, Dec. 13, was created baron Halifax. On the accession of George I. he was a member of the regency; was appointed first lord commissioner of the treasury, Oct. 5, 1714; created viscount Sunbury and earl of Halifax, Oct. 15; and died May 15, 1715.-Addison has celebrated this lord in his account of the greatest English poets. Steele has drawn his character in the second volume of the Spectator, and in the fourth of the Tatler; but Pope, in the portrait of Bufo, in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, has returned the ridicule which his lordship, in conjunction with Prior, had heaped on Dryden's Hind and Panther. Walpole's Cataogue, vol. ii. p. 116. tion and esteem; but the passionate veneration I have for your lordship, I think, flows from an admiration of qualities in you, of which, in the whole course of these papers, I have acknowledged myself incapable. While I busy myself as a stranger upon earth, and can pretend to no other than being a looker-on, you are conspicuous in the busy and polite world, both in the world of men, and that of letters. While I am silent and unobserved in public meetings, you are admired by all that approach you, as the life and genius of the conversation. What an happy conjunction of the different talents meets in him whose whole discourse is at once animated by the strength and force of reason, and adorned with all the graces and embellishments of wit! When learning irradiates common life, it is then in its highest use and perfection; and it is to such as your lordship, that the sciences owe the esteem which they have with the active part of mankind. Knowledge of books, in recluse men, is like that sort of lantern, which hides him who carries it, and serves only to pass through secret and gloomy paths of his own; but, in the possession of a man of business, it is, as a torch in the hand of one who is willing and able to shew those who were bewildered the way which leads to their prosperity and welfare. A generous concern for your country, and a passion for every thing that is truly great and noble, are what actuate all your life and actions; and I hope you will forgive me that I have an ambition this book may be placed in the library |