have confidered, how much he owed to poor old Burton. BURTON. "Death and departure of friends are things generally grievous: Omnium quæ in vita humana contingunt, luctus atque mors funt acerbiffima. [CARDAN de Confol. lib. 2.] The moft auftere and bitter accidents that can happen to a man in this life, in æternum valedicere, to part for ever, to forfake the world, and all our friends, 'tis ultimum terribilium, the last and the greatest terrour; moft irkfome and troublesome unto us? &c.-Nay, many generous fpirits, and grave ftaid men otherwife, are fo tender in this, that at the lofs of a dear friend they will cry out, roar, and tear their hair, lamenting fome months after, howling O hone, as those Irish women, and Greeks at their graves, commit many indecent actions, &c. STERNE. ""Tis an inevitable chancethe first statute in Magna Chartait is an everlasting act of parliament my dear brother-all muft die." BURTON. ""Tis an inevitable chance, the firft ftatute in Magna Charta, an everlasting act of parliament, all muft die." STERNE. "When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at firft he laid it to his heart-he liftened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto it, &c.—But as foon as he began to look into the ftores of philofophy, and confider how many excellent things might be faid on the occafion-nobody upon earth can conceive, fays the great orator, how joyful, how happy it made me." BURTON. "Tully was much grieved for his daughter Tulliola's death, at firft, until fuch time that he had confirmed his mind, with fome philofophical precepts, then he began to triumph over fortune and grief, and for her reception into heaven to be much more joyed, than before he was troubled for her lofs." STERNE. "Kingdoms and provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? Where is Troy, and Mycene, and Thebes, and Delos, and Perfepolis, and Agrigentum? -What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh, and Babylon, of Cyzicum, and Mytilene; the faireft towns that ever the fun rofe upon, are now no more." BURTON. "Kingdoms, provinces, towns, and cities." fays Burton, "have their periods, and are confumed. In those flourishing times of Troy, Mycene was the fairest city in Greece, but it, alas, and that Affyrian Nineveh are quite overthrown. The like fate hath that Egyptian and Baotian Thebes. Delos, the common council-house of Greece, and Babylon, the greateft city that ever the fun fhone on, hath now nothing but walls, and rubbish left-And where is Troy itself now, Perfepolis, Carthage, Cyzicum, Sparta, Argos, and all thofe Grecian cities? Syracufe and Agrigentum, the fairest towns in Sicily, which had fometimes feven hundred thousand inhabitants, are now decayed." STERNE. "Let us follow Sterne again." Returning out of Afia, when I failed from Ægina towards Mega ra, ra, I began to view the country round about. Ægina was behind me, Megara was before, Pyræus on the right hand, Corinth on the left. What flourishing towns now proftrate on the earth! Alas! alas! faid I to myself, that a man fhould difturb his foul for the lofs of a child, when fo much as this, lies awfully buried in his prefence. Remember, faid I to myself again -remember that thou art a man." "This is, with fome flight variations, Burton's tranflation of Servius's letter. Sterne alters juft enough, to fhew that he had not attended to the original." BURTON. "Returning out of Afia, when I failed from Ægina towards Megara, I began to view the country round about. Ægina was behind me, Megara before, Pyræus on the right hand, Corinth on the left; what flourishing towns heretofore, now proftrate and overwhelmed before mine eyes! Alas, why are we men fo much difquieted with the departure of a friend, whose life is much shorter; when fo many goodly cities lie buried before us. Remember, O Servius, thou art a man; and with that I was much confirmed, and corrected myself." STERNE. "But," continues Mr. Shandy, "he is gone for ever from us? be it fo. He is got from under the hands of his barber before he was bald. He is but rifen from a feast before he was furfeited-from a banquet before he had got drunken. The Thracians wept when a child was born, and feafted and made merry when a man went out of the world, and with reafon. Is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat? Not to thirst, than to take phyfic to cure it? Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh." BURTON. "Thou doft him great injury to defire his longer life. Wilt thou have him crazed and fickly ftill, like a tired traveller, that comes weary to his inn, begin his journey afresh;-he is now gone to eternity-as if he had rifen, faith Plutarch, from the midst of a feaft, before he was drunk-Is it not much better not to hunger at all, than to eat? not to thirst, than to drink to fatisfy thirst? not to be cold, than to put on clothes to drive away cold? You had more need rejoice that I am freed from difeafes, agues, &c. The Thracians wept ftill when a child was born, feafted and made mirth when any man was buried; and fo fhould we rather be glad for fuch as die well, that they are fo happily freed from the miseries of this life." TEWART, JOHN, Earl of Bute, a peer of North Britain, director Dd 2 director of the education of George the Third, and afterwards his prime minifter, during a period fcarcely to be equalled in English hiftory, for party violence and civil difcord, which diffufed a dark cloud of implied fufpicion, or open averfion, over the rifing glories of a young and amiable Prince, who had fo lately afcended the throne of his ancestors, with the most enthufiaftic attachment of his fubjects. Thefe circumstances have been attributed, by fome, to weaknefs, by others, to ill-defign in the adminiftration of the day, and, by many, to the fuperior skill and verfatility of ther opponents, in forming parliamentary cabal, and fomenting popular difcontent. and rapidly commenced, not without perfonal injury to the proprietor, a fhort time before his death. After feceding from the oftenfible fituation of a minifter, Lord Bute's favorite purfuit was botany, in which his researches are faid to have been fuccefsful; his work on this fubject, with plates, of which. I believe, only a dozen were printed, is an elegant and fplendid proof, that when levees and drawing rooms lose their charm, methods of paffing through life may ftill be ftruck out, without facrificing health, fame, and fortune, to the injurious vices, the defpicable arts, or the trifling follies of Newmarket, the brothel, or the chace. For the fhades of retirement, Sir Robert Walpole is faid to have neglected or forgotten to qualify himself, an evil not eafily remedied, and productive, in many inftances, of ferious perplexity, which that minifter, after having been hunted down, by the furious but mercenary blood-hounds of Pulteney, pathetically lamented, with tears. This nobleman, happy in the fmiles of his fovereign, but never poffeffing the confidence of the people, married the wealthy heirefs of Wortley Montague, and after retiring from a miniftry, which the ftrong arm of military interpofition was fcarcely able to protect, paffed his remaining days in the lap of science and tranquil lity, expending, or rather finking, I cannot but think, that the more than eighty thousand pounds, fubject of this article would have in a fuperb edifice on High Cliff, deferved much better of science a barren promontory on the sea and of mankind, and would have coaft of Hampshire, oppofite the been more juftly entitled to the Ifle of Wight; not intimidated by praife of a benevolent friend of the affurances of his architect and the arts, had he permitted the imfurveyor, who afferted that, from preffions of his botanic work to the daily and rapid inroads of the have been more numerous, and tide, in less than fifty years, the given to the public at a moderate whole building, as well as the fur- price, or a copy to have been difrounding gardens and pleafure-tributed, gratis, to every univerfity grounds, must be washed into the and public library in Europe; the fea; a prediction, the fulfilling of partial and reserved manner in which, I understand, the raging which it was printed and conferred elements have already ruinoufly favoured ftrongly of a haughty, ariftocratic aristocratic fpirit, illiberal, and unworthy an amateur and a gentleman. By a fpecies of internal, or rather collateral evidence, this circumftance ferves to corroborate a report which I formerly heard, but did not credit, from a relation of the Thane's, who had no temptation, and was of a profeffion that generally infpires a just hatred for lying. In the domestic management and education of his children, he defcribed the paternal deportnient of Lord Bute as fingular and auftere: from childhood to manhood they enjoyed a very minute portion of the time and attention of their father, who, abforbed in political reveries, deep ftudy, or felf-contemplation, directed, that at a fixed and regular hour they should once, and only once a day, be introduced to him, and make their obedience. After the cool common-place queftions, mutually given and received, they retired. This anecdote, if true, instead of the foft endearing intercourfe of a parent, might be rather termed a dramatic reprefentation of domeftic decorum, perfectly confiftent with the Earl's gefture and manner of speaking, which those who remember it, may recollect were theatric; it was rather the formal condefcenfion of an Oriental despot, a father without affection, than the fond meeting of a parent with his off'spring, liftening to their prattle, or viewing, with delight, the opening buds of mental and corporal improvement. "Can you vouch for the authenticity of certain accufations you have produced againft the favorite, and the mother of a great perfonage?" faid a barrister (who has the reputation of hitting off fatirical sketches impromptu) to the famous author of certain violent periodic invectives. "Nothing like it," replied the honourable gentleman, "nothing like it; I was totally ignorant of the business, but the hint, probably first suggested by fome hungry paragraph-monger, or induftrious pamphleteer, afforded fo fair an opportunity for raifing public clamour, and fanning the embers of difcontent, that I could not fuffer it to escape me." The indignant lawyer, inftantly and fignificantly turned his back on the propagator of falfehood during the remainder of the evening, obferving towards him a contemptuous and expreffive filence. "A private country gentleman, and a colonel of a regiment of militia," (obferved the barrifter to the writer of this article, and a few others, who fat near him on the occafion, which was a public dinner) "the rafcal behind me might have lived unnoticed, and have died without remembrance, had he not, at an early period of life, given notorious and flagrant proofs of an utter contempt for religion and the moral duties. With a fuitable circle of compa nions, he inftituted a fociety, whose existence was a fatire on mankind, and whofe impunity was a libel on their country; they chofe Satan for their divinity, and profaned, by mock rites and obfcene practices, the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England, by addreffing them to the monarch of hell. "After exhaufting every refource of a depraved fancy and an im pure pure imagination, he turned his mind from blafphemy unenlivened by wit, from fenfuality without refinement, from love without delicacy, to political adventure; and in a conference with the minifter of the day, on the price of his vote, his demands were fo arbitrary, exorbitant, and unreasonable, that the premier rejected them in a peremptory and fpirited manner, and was told by this political renegado, that in a few months he would write him down. Difappointed in his profpects at court, he drew his venal pen, and became a virulent libeller of king, church, and ftate, till, by the unwarrantable rashness of a minifter, who violated, in his perfon, the principles of the English conftitution, in order to revenge the infults of his master, whose mother had been groffly traduced, our hero had the verfatility to render the private injuries of an obfcure debauchee the caufe of the whole kingdom, by which means, he fet the nation in an uproar. "Thus, an individual of diabolical features, blafted character, and infamous life, the traducer of revealed religion, and ridiculer of its myfteries; the defender and panegyrift of fraud, cruelty, and obfceneness; the reviler of that fex, to whom we all owe, not only our existence and nurture, but the moft delicious moments of our life; whofe hand had been against every man, and every man's hand against him, became, by one of thofe extraordinary revolutions which govern the world, the most favored and popular man alive, fecuring adoration, honour, and emolument, far beyond all that This rough outline, whofe feverity I cannot but cenfure, and whofe truth, in many inftances, I cannot on any account fubfcribe to, was heard with filent attention by the furrounding circle, while the only notice taken of it, by the only perfon who ought to have noticed it, and who must have diftinctly heard the whole, was his swallowing a half pint bumper of Burgundy, probably with a view to wash down the ebullitions of anger and chagrin. Before I conclude, it may probably be expected of me to notice, the oft repeated, and long continued charge of fecret influence, adduced against the Earl of Bute for many years after he quitted the cabinet: this intercourfe is faid to have been carried on by the medium of a fortunate, and in many refpects a meritorious man, to whom I grant, without hesitation, the PALMA NON SINE PULVERE." This accufation, probably first originating from hatred or from fear, which implies from its name as well as nature, difficulty of detection, would, with others of a fimilar tendency, have long fince been forgotten, but for a mysterious air of privacy, the effect of fear or policy, always obferved, in this nobleman's interviews with the king'; |