house in St. James's Park, having before obtained a grant of the fite of it from the Crown.

The Duke continued out of employ till the general change of the ministry in 1710; in effecting which he had some share, and was presently made Lord Steward of the Household, whence he was advanced the following year to be Lord Prefident of the Coun cil, He joined in all the measures of that remarkable ministry*, (of which himself was a confiderable part) excepting in the affair of the Catalans only, whofe lives and liberties he thought too much expofed by that part of the plan of the peace of Utrecht; and he

His Grace was firft married to Urfula, daughter of Colonel Stawel, and widow of Earl Conway. His fecond wife was Lady Catharine, eldest daughter to Fulk Greville, Lord Brooke, wi dow of Baptift Noel Earl of Gainsborough; the died in 1703-4. His Grace had no iffue by either of these ladies, to whom, we are told by feveral, he fhewed but little deference: and indeed the natural children he had during these marriages give but too much room to believe the truth of that cenfure. However, his Grace makes a kind mention, in his Will, of all his wives, declaring that " he had had the most extraordinary blefling of "three kind and excellent wives." He alfo defired to be buried near his second lady in Westminster-abbey, and intimates that he would have removed the corpfe of his first wife to the fame grave, had the not lain near her own mother in the country.

It is faid he had made his addresses to the Queen in the way of love before her marriage with the Prince of Denmark. This is hinted by Mrs. Manley in the ftyle and manner of her Memoirs of the English Court. Mr. Boyer alfo takes notice of it in his history of this Queen." Some years," fays he, "before the Queen was married to Prince George, the Marquis of

laboured heartily, though without success, to obtain a better security for that ill-fortuned people, who had entirely relied on England for protection. Notwithftanding his difagreement with the Earl of Oxford in this particular, yet he continued his friendship to that minister after his difgrace; and though the Duke, in virtue of his poft, became, on the death of the Queen, one of the Lords Juftices for governing the kingdom till the arrival of her fucceffor in England, yet he ne→ ver afterwards entered into any of the concerns at Court, and conftantly oppofed the steps pursued by the administration, spending fome of his leisure hours in the most elegant manner with his Mufe *.

In 1716 his lady brought him a font, whom he left "Normanby, then Earl of Mulgrave, á nobleman of fingular "accomplishments both of mind and person, and of a pienti"ful fortune, afpired fo high as to (attempt to) marry the Lady "Anne: but though his addreffes to her were checked as foon "as difcovered, yet the Princefs had ever an esteem for him.”

* Witnefs his Seffion of the Poets upon the choice of a Laureat in 1719, and thofe excellent lines on Mr. Pope. It was at this time alfo that he wrote his two tragedies of Julius Cæfar and the Death of Brutus; for the latter of which the juft-mene tioned poet composed two choruses, which were fet to mufic by Signor Bononcini, and performed at Buckingham-house. Mf. (now Bishop) Warburton obferves, that the two chorufes were made at the request of the Duke, to adorn a very poor performance of his; and that they have the ufual effect of all ill-adjutted ornaments, they make the meanness of the piece more confpicuous.

+ She had brought the Duke several children before this, as, firit, a daughter christened Sophia, who died very young, and two fons, to the firit of which Queen Anne, as a god-mother

a child of nine years old at his death, which happened Feb. 24th, 1720-21, at the age of feventy-one. His corpfe lay magnificently in ftate for a confiderable time at Buckingham-houfe, whence it was conveyed with the greatest funeral pomp to Weftminster-abbey, where, being interred according to his own requeft, a fumptuous monument was erected afterwards to his memory in Henry VII.'s Chapel, for which purpofe he left 500l. by his will, and direЯed an epitaph, written by himself, to be put upon it. But one expreffion was omitted by order of Dr.Atterbury*, then gave the name of John, who lived but three weeks, and the year after another fon' called Robert, and ftyled Marquis of Normanby, born Dec. 11. 1711. On his death his father wrote a tender poem, which ends thus:

But why fo much digreffion
This fatal lofs to fhow,
Alas! there's no expreffion
Can tell a parent's woe.

After this there was another daughter chriftened Sophia Catharina Henrietta, who lived till the was four years of age.

*The expreffion was Chriftum adreneror, which he thought intended by the Duke in derogation of the divine nature of the Son of God; and the next remark will fhew he had ground for that opinion, notwithstanding another worthy clergyman has likewife thewn the words otherwife fairly capable of a higher meaning, being ufed by Varro to fignify even the highest act of religious worthip, who says, Venerem et Minervam advenerari. The original epitaph is

Dubius fed non improbus vixi.
Incertus morior fed inturbatus.
Humanum eft nefcire et errare.
Chriftum advenerbr, Dco confido
Omnipotenti, benevolentiffimo.
Eha Entium miferere mihi

Dean of that church, who would not suffer it to fland there; and indeed the whole, after many declarations of his religious sentiments which are found interspersed up and down in his writings, too plainly fpeaks him a Theift *, yet not without fome mixture of a superstitioous cast in his composition †.

*

Among these paffages we thall produce only that in his Ode on Brutus, the rather because it seems to have been written about the fame time with the Epitaph.

'Tis faid that favourite mankind

Was made the lord of all below;

But yet the doubtful are concern'd to find
'Tis only one man tells another fo.
And for this great dominion here
Which over other beafts we claim,
Reafon our beft credential does appear,
By which indeed we domineer,

But how abfurdly we may fee with fhame:
Reason, that folemn trifler! light as air,
Driv'n up and down by cenfure or applaufe,
By partial love away 't is blown,

Or the leaft prejudice can weigh it down;
Thus our high privilege becomes our fnate.
In any nice and weighty caufe

How weak at beft is Reafon! yet the grave

Impofe on that small judgment which we have.

+ I have ventured to affert this from several passages in his Works, fome of the moft remarkable of which thall be laid be. fore the reader for his judgment. In the poem already menti→ oned, written in his voyage to Tangier, the plan of which is a Vifion, he concludes thus ;

Amaz'd, I wak'd in hafte,
All trembling at my doom;

Dreams oft' repeat adventures paft,
And tell our ills to come.

Again, in his Memoirs of hinífelf, speaking of the death of the Earl of Sandwich, he makes the following remark. He dined in Mr. Digby's thip the day before the battle, when no body dreamed of fighting, and thewed a gloomy difcontent, fo con

Mr. Pope having declined to write his character, there came out in 1723 his Works pompously printed, with his picture prefixed, curioufly engraved from an original painting by-Sir Godfrey Kneller, as also a

trary to his ufual cheerful humour, that we even then all took notice of it, but much more afterwards. The next inftance is more full to our purpofe: it is in the fame Memoirs where he relates feveral paffages in his firft adventure at fea. Our fleet, fays he, happening to go near the shore to take in freth water, Prince Rupert dined with a gentleman who lived thereabouts, and returning on board in a little boat with only Lord Blaney and myself, there happened fo fudden and violent a storm that we did not like it, and Prince Rupert began to talk of Prince Maurice being caft away by a like accident. Upon which, continues our Author, I could not but reflect on my family alfo, fince my grandfather and three of his brothers had been drowned. The Lord Blaney hearing all this, made us all laugh in the midft of our danger, by fwearing that though he liked our company he withed himself out of it, and in any other boat whatfoever, fince he feared the ill fortune of our two familics would fink him: The ftory of his grandfather and three brothers is in the Peerage of England by Mr. Collins, who tells us there were in all five brothers, one of whom was drowned in France, three others loft their lives in the paffage of Whitgiftferry over the river Humber, and the youngest broke his neck in a new riding-house which his father had made out of an old confecrated chapel, according to Sir William Dugdale. This father was the firit Earl of Mulgrave in the family, being created by Queen Elizabeth, by whofe express command he, among other English lords, attended the Duke of Anjou to Antwerp; and being in the famous fea-fight against the Spaniards in 1553, who had threatened an invafion, was knighted by the Lord Admiral for his gallant deportment and memorable fervice in that engagement. He was afterwards appointed Governor of the Brief in Zealand, and made a knight of the Garfer. The title of Lord Sheffield of Butterwick was firft given