Dryden's monumental inscription for this noble loyalist, confers too much honour on his memory to be omitted.

"ON THE MONUMENT OF THE MARQUIS OF

WINCHESTER.

"He who in impious times undaunted stood,
And 'midst rebellion durst be just and good,
Whose arms asserted, and whose sufferings more
Confirm'd the cause for which he fought before,
Rests here-rewarded by an heavenly Prince
For what his earthly could not recompence :
Pray, reader, that such times no more appear;
Or, if they happen, learn true honour here.
Ask of this age's faith and loyalty,
Which, to preserve them, Heav'n confin'd in thee.
Few subjects could a king like thine deserve,
And fewer, such a king so well could serve :
Blest king, blest subject, whose exalted state
By sufferings rose, and gave the law to fate.
Such souls are rare, but mighty patterns giv'n
To earth, and meant for ornaments to heav'n'!"]

7 British Poets, vol. vi. p. 165.

EDWARD HYDE,

EARL OF CLARENDON,

FOR his comprehensive knowledge of mankind, styled The Chancellor of Human Nature'. His character, at this distance of time, may, ought to be impartially considered. His designing or blinded cotemporaries heaped the most unjust abuse upon him; the subsequent age, when the partisans of prerogative were at least the loudest, if not the most numerous, smit with a work that deified their martyr, have been unbounded in their encomiums. We shall steer a middle course, and separate his great virtues, which have not been the foundation of his fame, from his faults as an historian, the real sources of it 3.

Of all modern virtues, patriotism has stood the test the worst. The great Strafford, with the eloquence of Tully and the heroism of Epaminondas, had none of the steadiness of the

⚫ Vide Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as related by Historians, quoted in Gen. Dict. vol. vi. p. 341. [Published by Warburton, but without his name, in 1727, 12mo. Dr. Lort.]

[See a vindication of the noble historian from lord Or ford's censures, in Remarks on this Catalogue, p. 23.]

latter. Hampden, less stained, cannot but be suspected of covering ambitious thoughts with the mantle of popular virtue.-In the partition of employments on a treaty with the king, his contenting himself with asking the post of governor to the prince, seems to me to have had at least as deep a tincture of self-interestedness as my lord Strafford had, who strode at once from demagogue to prime-minister. Sir Edward Hyde, who opposed an arbitrary court, and embraced the party of an afflicted one, must be allowed to have acted conscientiously. A better proof was his behaviour on the Restoration, when the torrent of an infatuated nation entreated the king and his minister to be absolute. Had Clarendon sought nothing but power, his power had never ceased. A corrupted court and a blinded populace, were less the causes of the chancellor's fall, than an ungrateful king, who could not pardon his lordship's having refused to accept for him the slavery of his country. In this light my lord Clarendon was more "The Chancellor of Human Nature," than from his knowledge of it. Like justice itself he held the balance between the necessary power of the supreme magistrate and the interests of the people. This never-dying obligation his cotemporaries were taught to overlook and to clamour against, till they removed