thoufand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity for his life, of five hundred pounds a year, of my grandfather, Halifax; which was the foundation of his fubfequent fortune. His figure was beautiful; but his manner was irrefiftible, by either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled, during all his war, to connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and feparate views, jealoufies, and wrongheadedneffes. Whatever Court he went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to fome refty and refractory ones) he as conftantly prevailed, and brought them into his meafures. The Penfionary Heinfius, a venerable old Minifter, grown grey in bufinefs, and who had governed the Republic of the United Provinces for more than forty years, was abfolutely governed by the Duke of Marlborough, as that Republic feels to this day. He was always cool; and nobody ever obferved the least variation in his countenance: he could refufe more gracefully than other people could grant; and those who went away from him the most diffatisfied, as to the fubftance of their bufinefs, were yet perfonally charmed with him, and, in fome degree, comforted by his manner. With all his gentleness and gracefulness, no man living was more conscious of his fituation, nor maintained his dignity better.'

The foregoing characteristics of our renowned British warrior, are, we believe, no lefs true than curious ;-we always, indeed, thought the Duke had, in reality, much more of Paris than of Hector in his compofition.

• So much had Lord C. this point, of graceful and engaging manner at heart, that' in another le ter he tells his fon, that People mistake grofly, who imagine that the leaft awkwardnefs, in either matter or manner, mind or body, is an indifferent thing, and not worthy of attention. It may poffibly be a weakness in me (but in fhort we are all fo made): I confefs to you fairly, that when you shall come home, and that I first fee you, if I find you ungraceful in your addrefs, and awkward in your perfon and dress, it will be impoffible for me to love you half fo well as I fhould otherwise do, let your intrinfic merit and knowledge be ever so great. If that would be your case with me, as it really would, judge how much worse it might be with others, who have not the fame affection and partiality for you, and to whose hearts you muit make your own way.' Again, Thofe attentions ought never to be omitted; they coft little, and please a great deal; but the neglect of them offends more than you can yet imagine. Great merit, or great failings, will make you be respected or defpifed; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or difliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourfelf, why you like fuch and fuch people, and diflike fuch and fuch others; and you will find, that those different fentiments proceed from very flight caufes. Moral vir tues are the foundation of fociety in general, and of friendship in particolar; but Attentions, Manners, and Graces, both adorn and ftrengthen them. My heart is fo fet upon your pleafing, and confequently fucceeding, in the world, that poffibly I have already (and probably shall again) repeat the fame things over and over to you. However, to err, if I do err, on the furer fide, I fhall continue to communicate to you those observations upon the world, which long experience has enabled me to make, and which I have generally found to hold true. Your youth and talents, armed with my experience, may go a great way; and that armour is very much at your fervice, if you please to wear it. I premife that it is not my imagination, but my me. mery, that gives you thefe rules: I am not writing pretty, but ufeful reflections."

No

No one who is at all acquainted with the character of Lord C. will fuppofe him to be one of thofe fevere and rigid preceptors who would make the " delightful tafk" of education both toilfome to himself, and difguftful to his pupil. Some wrongheaded pedants have imagined it to be a part of their bufinefs to eradicate every paffion, except the love of books, from the student's breaft, and to fix his virtue in that ftate of apathy which Pope compares to a froft. Not fo this wifer tutor, this master of the human heart. Hear what he fays on the subject of business, relaxation, and pleasure :

I hope you reflect how much you have to do, and that you are determined to employ every moment of your time accordingly. You have your claffical and feverer ftudies to continue, with Mr. Harte; you have your exercifes to learn; the turn and manners of a Court to acquire referving always fome time for the decent amufements and pleasures of a gentleman. You fee that I am never against pleasures; I loved them myself, when I was of your age; and it is as reasonable that you should love them now. But I infift upon it, that pleasures are very combinable with both business and studies, and have a much better relish from the mixture. The man who cannot join bufinefs and pleasure, is either a formal coxcomb in the one, or a fenfual beaft in the other. Your evenings I therefore allot for company, affemblies, balls, and fuch fort of amufements; as I look upon those to be the best schools for the manners of a gentleman; which nothing can give but ufe, obfervation, and experience.'

The above paragraph is extracted from a letter dated in 1749, when Mr. Stanhope was in his eighteenth year.

As the noble Preceptor had, to ufe his own feeling expression, fet his heart,' on his pupil's making a good figure in the House of Commons (of which, he aflures him, he will be a member as foon as he is of age) he chiefly appropriates a number of let ters to the important purpofe of completely fitting Mr. Stanhope for that refpectable ftation. He is efpecially folicitous that his fon fhould be an able, and, above all, an agreeable fpeaker; he ftrongly urges the utility and neceffity of attaining this popular qualification; and he endeavours to prove that it is to be acquired with very little difficulty, by any man of good common fense, who reafons juftly, and expreffes his meaning in fuch language as every gentleman ought to ufe. He maintains that a profound depth of thinking, or a great extent of knowledge, are lefs neceffary than a graceful and pleafing manner of delivering and enforcing common fentiments. This doctrine he illuftrates by a few inftances:

**

The late Lord Chancellor Cowper's ftrength, fays he, as an Orator, lay by no means in his reafonings, for he often hazarded very weak ones. But fuch was the purity and elegancy of his style,

*This Letter is dated in 1749.

fuch

fuch the propriety and charms of his elocution, and fuch the gracefulness of his action, that he never fpoke without universal applause i the ears and the eyes gave him up the hearts and the understandings of the audience. On the contrary, the late Lord Townshend always fpoke materially, with argument and knowledge, but never pleased. Why? His diction was not only inelegant, but frequently ungrammatical, always vulgar; his cadences falfe, his voice unharmonious, and his action ungraceful. No body heard him with patience; and the young fellows ufed to joke upon him, and repeat his inaccuracies. The late Duke of Argyle, though the weakest reasoner, was the most pleafing speaker I ever knew in my life. He charmed, he warmed, he forcibly ravished the audience; not by his matter certainly, but by his manner of delivering it. A moft genteel figure, a graceful noble air, an harmonious voice, an elegancy of style, and a frength of emphafis, confpired to make him the most affecting, perfuafive, and applauded speaker, I ever faw. I was captivated like others; but when I came home, and coolly confidered what he had faid, ftripped of all thofe ornaments in which he had dreffed it, I often found the matter flimzy, the arguments weak, and I was con'vinced of the power of thofe adventitious concurring circumftances, which ignorance of mankind only, calls trifling ones. Cicero in his book de Oratore, in order to raife the dignity of that profeffion, which he well knew himself to be at the head of, afferts that compleat Orator must be a compleat every thing, Lawyer, Philofopher, Divine, &c. That would be extremely well, if it were poffible: but man's life is not long enough; and I hold him to be the compleateft Orator, who fpeaks the best upon that fubject which occurs; whofe happy choice of words, whofe lively imagination, whofe elocution and action adorn and grace his matter; at the fame time that they excite the attention, and engage the paffions of his audience."

In farther illuftrating this fubject, in a subsequent letter, the noble and accomplished Writer introduces the following account of the famous Lord Bolingbroke; a transcript of which cannot fail of proving acceptable to fuch of our Readers as are not in poffeffion of the book:

I have fent you Lord Bolingbroke's book, which he published about a year ago. I defire that you will read it over and over again, with particular attention to the ftyle, and to all thofe beauties of Oratory with which it is adorned. Till read that book, I confefs. I did not know all the extent and powers of the English language. Lord Bolingbroke has both a tongue and a pen to perfuade; his manner of fpeaking in private converfation, is full as elegant as his writings; whatever subject he either speaks or writes upon, he adorns with the most fplendid eloquence; not a ftudied or laboured eloquence, but fuch a flowing happiness of diction, which (from care perhaps at 'firft) is become fo habitual to him, that even his most familiar converfations, if taken down in writing, would bear the prefs, without the leaft correction either as to method er ftyle. If his conduct, in the former part of his life, had been equal to all his natural and acquired talents, he would moft juftly have merited the epithet of all

Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, &c,
Bb

REY May 1774.

accom

accomplished. He is himfelf fenfible of his paft errors: those vio lent paffions, which feduced him in his youth, have now fubfided by age; and, take him as he is now, the character of all-accomplished is more his due, than any man's I ever knew in my life.

But he has been a moft mortifying inftance of the violence of human paffions, and of the weakness of the moft exalted human reason. His virtues and his vices, his reason and his paffions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a fhining and fudden contraft.

Here the darkeft, there the most splendid colours, and both rendered more shining from their proximity. Impetuofity, excefs, and almost extravagancy, characterifed not only his paffions, but even his fenfes. His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and ftorm of pleasures, in which he most licentiously triumphed, difdaining all decorum. His fine imagination has often been heated and exhaufted with his body, in celebrating and deifying the proftitute of the night; and his convivial joys were puthed to all the extravagancy of frantic Bacchanals. Thofe paffions were interrupted but by a ftronger, Ambition. The former impaired both his conftitution and his character, but the latter deftroyed both his fortune and his reputation.

He has noble and generous fentiments, rather than fixed reflected principles of good-nature and friendship; but they are more violent than lafling, and fuddenly and often varied to their oppofite extremes, with regard even to the fame perfons. He receives the common attentions of civility as obligations, which he returns with interest ; and refents with paffion the little inadvertencies of human nature, which he repays with intereft too. Even a difference of opinion upon a Philofophical subject, would provoke, and prove him no practical Philofopher, at least.

• Notwithstanding the disipation of his youth, and the tumultuous agitation of his middle age, he has an infinite fund of various and almost univerfal knowledge, which, from the cleareft and quickest conception, and happiest memory, that ever man was bleffed with, The always carries about him. It is his pocket-money, and he never has occafion to draw upon a book for any fum. He excels more particularly in Hiftory, as his historical works plainly prove. The relative Political and Commercial interefts of every country in Europe, particularly of his own, are better known to him, than perhaps to any man in it; but how fteadily he has purfued the latter, in his public conduct, his enemies, of all parties and denominations, tell with joy.

He engaged young, and diftinguished himself in bufinefs; and his penetration was almost intuition. I am old enough to have heared him fpeak in Parliament. And I remember, that, though prejudiced against him by party, I felt all the force and charms of his eloquence. Like Belial, in Milton," he made the worse appear the better caufe.” All the internal and external advantages and talents of an Orator are undoubtedly his. Figure, voice, elocution, knowledge; and, above all, the purest and most florid diction, with the justeft metaphors, and happiest images, had raised him to the post of Secretary at War, at-four-and-twenty years old; an age at which others are hardly thought fit for the smallest employments.

• During

During his long exile in France, he applied himself to ftudy with his characteristical ardour; and there he formed, and chiefly executed the plan of a great philofophical work. The common bounds of human knowledge are too narrow for his warm and aspiring imagination. He must go, extra flamantia mania Mundi, and explore the unknown and unknowable regions of Metaphyfics; which open an unbounded field for the excurfions of an ardent imagination; where endless conjectures fupply the defect of unattainable knowledge, and too often ufurp both its name and its influence.

He has had a very handsome perfon, with a moft engaging addrefs in his air and manners: he has all the dignity and good-breed. ing which a man of quality fhould or can have, and which so few, in this country, at leaft, really have.

He profeffes himself a Deift; believing in a general Providence, but doubting of, though by no means rejecting (as is commonly fuppofed) the immortality of the foul, and a future state.

Upon the whole, of this extraordinary man, what can we fay, but alas, poor human nature!'

In our review of the fecond volume we may have a fair occafion for retorting, on the part of Lord B. this reflection on the frailty of human nature. What will our fober Readers fay, if it fhould appear that the wife, the moral, the fatherly Lord C is feriously, what Mrs. Bull was politically, an advocate for the indifpenfible duty of Cuckoldom?" Something like this, we are afraid, really occurs in the farther continuation of these Letters; but we have hitherto regarded them only as they occur in the regular leries of publication.""

We are now arrived at the clofe of the first volume. The second will be the fubject of an article in our next Review.

Hift. of John Bull, in Swift's Mifcellanies.

G.

ART. VII. The Bermudian; a Poem. By Nathaniel Tucker. 4to. I s. 6d. Cadell. 1774.

T

HE rocky fhores of the little iflands known by the name of the Bermudas, and which confift of little more than fores, are not a very fruitful fubject for celebration; but the prepoffeffions of a young man, in favour of his native foil, the fcene of his earliest pleasures, and where, perhaps, he has spent his happiest days, will find charms in almost any place, which may escape the obfervation of, or be imperceptible to, others.

Waller wrote verfes in praife of Bermudas; and he was too good a poet not to magnify the beauties which he fung. He fo highly extolled the "Happy Inland," that half the world were on tip-toe to fly to the enchanting fcene. The good Dean Berkeley + wanted to erect a college there; and government was not backward to countenance the piously romantic defign. His plan, however, was too ill founded to fucceed; the Dean Afterward Bishop of Cloyne.