readily allow that Shaftesbury not only had splendid talents and an energy of mind almost unparalleled, but that he had very valuable qualities calculated to secure attachment and respect both in private and in public life. He was a high-bred gentlemen, and strictly observed all the conventional rules of honour. In an age of great pecuniary corruption he never took bribes from individuals at home or from foreign governments. Although frequently changing his party, he had the address to gain the confidence of his new associates without incurring the personal ill-will of those whom he left. The satire of Hudibras is unjust upon his betraying the different administrations to which he had belonged:

"Was for them and against them all,
But barbarous when they came to fall;
For by trepanning th' old to ruin,

He made his interest with the new one.”

Yet the attempts of his apologists to show that he was through life the consistent friend of liberty and toleration, with the exception of being carried rather too far by his zeal for the reformed faith, rest upon a total perversion of facts and a confusion of the distinctions between right and wrong. He began by supporting the worst abuses of the reign of Charles I. which had prevailed under his father-in-law, Lord Coventry; and when he went over to the parliament he was distinguished by his democratic fervour and his antipathy to the royal family. He then eagerly joined those who were for restoring Charles II. without condition or any security for the constitution; and as long as he shared in exercising the power of the prerogative, he eagerly assisted in extending it, and would have been pleased to see the King of England as absolute as the King of France. His love for the natural rights of mankind and for the Protestant religion he testified by his exclamation, "Delenda est Carthago,” and his accession to Clifford's treaty, by which Popery was to be established in England. Although he did not himself take bribes, he knew that the King and his colleagues were the pensioners of Louis, and he countenanced a policy by which England would have been degraded into a province of that kingdom which she has conquered, and of which she ought ever at least to be the rival and the equal.

I must likewise enumerate among his faults his grasping the office of Chancellor, for which, if he was a man of sense, he must have known that he was wholly incompetent. To gratify his ambition, or vanity, or caprice, he turned a court of justice into a lottery office,-sporting with the property and the dearest interests of his fellow-subjects.

scendans de ce Seigneur, en conservent une mémoire pleine de reconnoissance, comme M. le Comte, son petit fils, me l'a témoigné plus d'une fois." From the view I have felt myself obliged to take of some parts of Lord Shaftesbury's character and conduct, I have not felt myself at liberty to ask for access to the family archives, but there seems no reason to suppose that they would afford any contradiction to these statements.

When he went over to the popular side, he was of great service in opposing unconstitutional measures, such as the Test for establishing passive obedience." His "Exclusion Bill" was a glorious effort, and he did accomplish the grand safeguard for personal liberty,-for which we must be for ever grateful to him. But for his own crooked purposes, he inflamed religious animosity to a pitch of fury wholly unexampled in England, he patronised the monstrous fictions and murders of the Popish plot, and he passed the Catholic Disqualification Bill, the bitter fruits of which our children will taste. When by the extreme violence of his machinations he had alarmed the friends of constitutional government, and given an ascendancy to the arbitrary principles adopted by the Court, he planned an insurrection, which, if attempted according to his eager wishes, could only have terminated in the utter ruin of the liberal party, and the permanent establishment of despotism. The final result of his excesses and vagaries was, that he lost influence with all parties, and that his death in exile caused little grief to his friends or exultation to his enemies.

His great passion was for intense political excitement; and he was never so happy as in the crisis of some bold enterprise in which he hazarded his own safety and that of the state.*

From the specimens of his oratory which have come down to us, he appears to have been the first man in this country, whom we can designate a great parliamentary debater. Compare his dexterous appeals to party feeling, his cutting personalities, and his epigrammatic turns, to the eternal divisions and subdivisions of Pym, or the mixed pedantry and cant of the other leaders on either side in the Long Parliament. Halifax, formed on his model, if more refined, was less impressive, and till the elder Pitt arose, he probably was not excelled for eloquence in the English senate.

As to his literary merits, he was infinitely inferior to Bolingbroke; and I must agree with Horace Walpole, " that he was rather a copious writer for faction than an author, and that he wrote nothing which he could wish to be remembered." As the occasion required, he threw off a pamphlet containing some burning words, but reckless as to facts, sentiments, and even style.

We have deeply to regret the loss of his autobiography, which he intrusted to Mr. Locke, and which was burnt in the panic occasioned by the execution of Algernon Sydney for having in his possession a speculative treatise upon government. The philosopher has by no means made atonement for his timidity by his "Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, first Earl of Shaftes

* The most candid estimate of his character is to be found in Mr. Fox's letter to Serjeant Heywood: "I am quite glad I have little to do with Shaftesbury; for as to making him a real patriot or friend to our ideas of liberty, it is impossible, at least in my opinion. On the other hand, he is very far from being the devil he is described. Indeed he seems to have been strictly a man of honour, if that praise can be given to one destitute of public virtue, and who did not consider Catholics as fellow creatures: a feeling very common in those times."

bury," an extremely jejune and perfunctory performance. Indeed it is difficult to conceive how any one of common intelligence, who had been long in habits of familiar intercourse with such an eminent and interesting personage, should have professed to give any account of him without communicating more to instruct or amuse the reader.*

Shaftesbury seems to have been a most delightful companion, and the following anecdote is handed down to us to show his tact in society. While yet a young man, he was invited to dine with Sir John Denham, an aged widower (as was supposed), at Chelsea, who, when the guests had assembled, said to them that he had made choice of the company on account of their known abilities and particular friendship to him, for their advice in a matter of the greatest moment to him. He had been, he said, a widower for many years, and began to want somebody that might ease him of the trouble of housekeeping, and take some care of him under the growing infirmities of old age; and to that purpose had pitched upon a woman well known to him by the experience of many years, in fine, his housekeeper. A gentleman present, to dissuade him from this step, out of regard to his grown-up children, was beginning a very unflattering description of the object of his choice,-when Shaftesbury begged permission to interrupt the debate by a question to their host,-"whether he was not already married to her?" Sir John, after a little demur, answered, "Yes, truly, I was married to her yesterday." Well, then," exclaimed Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, "there is no more need of our advice; pray let us have the honour to see my lady and wish her joy, and so to dinner." He afterwards said privately, in returning home, to the gentleman whose speech he had cut short, "the man and the manner gave me a suspicion that having done a foolish thing he was desirous to cover himself with the authority of our advice. I thought it good to be sure before you went any farther, and you see what came of it." Another instance of his sagacity was his discovery of Miss Hyde's marriage to the Duke of York, long before it was made public, from the deference with which she was treated by her mother.‡

He lived in great splendour, and entertained the King sumptuously at Wimborne St. Giles. Like his principles, he changed his style of cookery. In 1669, when there was a coolness with the French court, he received a visit from Cosmo de Medici, Duke of Tuscany. Regulating his table entirely in the English manner,

*Doubts have been entertained whether this sketch be by Locke; but I cannot doubt the fact, although there is a copy of it among Locke's papers in the possession of Lord Lovelace not in Locke's handwriting.-A Life of Shaftesbury is still much wanted. That is the "Biographia Britannica" is a mere panegyric, and that by Martyn, the author of the tragedy of " Timoleon," proceeds upon the supposition that his hero's only and uniform object was to oppose the Popish faction at Court. Many valuable additions and corrections to it have been made by the editor, Mr. Cooke, to whom we are iudebted for the able "History of Parties." Ante, p. 172.

+ Locke, ix. 273.

he declared that "he was neither an admirer of the French taste nor friend to French interests, while some with the servile maxims of that country had imbibed its luxury. Others might treat him like a Frenchman; his desire was to entertain him like an Englishman." The Prince politely answered, "It was the_greatest compliment he could make him;" and on his return to Italy sent him every year presents of wine as a testimony of his regard.*

Complying fully with the Court fashion, he seems to have aimed at distinction in licentiousness as much as in any other pursuit. Even when he was Lord Chancellor, he sought to rival the King by the variety and notoriety of his amours. This is quaintly intimated to us by Roger North. Whether out of inclination, custom, or policy, I will not determine, it is certain he was not behindhand with the Court in the modish pleasures of the time. There was a deformed old gentleman called Sir P. Neal, who, they say, sat for the picture of Sydrophel in Hudidras, and about town was called the Lord Shaftesbury's groom, because he watered his mares in Hyde Park with Rhenish wine and sugar, and not seldom a bait of cheesecakes."t

Otway most indecently brought his vices on the stage in the character of ANTONIO in VENICE PRESERVED‡,—which that it might not be mistaken, was thus boastfully announced in the prologue:

"Next is a Senator that keeps

In Venice none a higher office bore;
To lewdness every night the lecher ran,
Shew me all London such another man."

But though eager for reputation as a man of gallantry, he modestly yielded the palm to his master. Charles having said to him one day, "Shaftesbury, you are the most profligate man in my dominions," he coolly replied, " Of a subject, sir, I believe I am."

Yet he was not altogether negligent of domestic duties. He was thrice married, and behaved to his wives with courtesy. The first, as we have related, was the daughter of Lord Keeper Coventry. By her he had no issue. Nor had he any by his third wife, who survived him,-a daughter of William Lord Spencer of Wormlington. But by his second wife, the daughter of the Earl of Exeter, he had a son, Anthony, who was not at all remarkable for genius, but who was the father of the third Earl, the pupil of Locke, and the author of "The Characteristics." In the educa

* Martyn, i, 383.

+ Examen, 60. Sir P. Neal thus contemptuously mentioned, is said to have been a physician; a friend of Locke's, and a fellow of the Royal Society.

It seems utterly impossible to believe that the scenes between Antonio and Aquilina could ever have been publicly performed. To make the matter, if possible, worse, the tragedy of "Venice Preserved" was brought out in February 1681, when Shaftesbury was to be tried for this life,-with a view to render him odious. Dr. Johnson says in his life of Otway, that this play was not acted till 1685, but he is mistaken. See Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 168.

tion of this grandson, amidst all his distractions, he took the most unceasing and tender interest.

Shaftesbury in his person was short and slender, but well made, and when young, strong and active, but from the life he led, he early showed symptoms of premature old age.

"A fiery soul which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."

I wish, for many reasons, that I could have spoken of him more favourably. It is delightful to think that his honours and estates are now enjoyed by descendants who, inheriting a large portion of his talents, are adorned by every public and private virtue.

CHAPTER XCI.

LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR NOTTINGHAM FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE WAS CREATED LORD CHANCELLOR.

We now pass from a Chancellor destitute of all juridical acquirements-to the "Father of Equity." Father of Equity." Lord Shaftes

bury was succeeded by LORD NOTTINGHAM, who [A. D. 1673.] fully deserves all the praise that has been bestowed upon him as a consummate lawyer," although I am afraid we shall not be able to regard him always as "a zealous defender of the constitution."*

Heneage Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, and Lord Chancellor of England, was born at Eastwell, in Kent, on the 23rd of December, 1621. He was of the ancient family of the Finches, whose descent from Henry Fitzherbert, Chancellor to Henry I., we have already noticed. He was the son of Sir Heneage Finch, who was the younger son of Sir Moyle Finch, and consequently he was first-cousin to the Lord Keeper of that name. This Sir Heneage, the father, was recorder of London, and Speaker of the House of Commons in the second parliament of Charles I. which met in 1626, and he delivered to the King the address for the removal of the Duke of Buckingham. He had been the friend of Lord Bacon, and gallantly stood by that great man when charged with bribery and corruption. He never rose to greater distinction, but he made a large fortune by his profession, and lived splendidly in Kensington Palace, which was sold by his grandson to William III.

Young Heneage, unlike his kinsman who gained the Great Seal by such evil arts, was ever remarkable for steadiness of con

* 3 Bl. Com. 56.

† See Life of Lord Keeper Finch, ante, Vol. II.