attacked by the commons, and again escaped by the protection of the lords'. In 1704 he wrote an answer to Bromley's speech against occasional conformity 2. He headed the Enquiry into the danger of the Church 3. In 1706 he proposed and negotiated the Union with Scotland; and when the elector of Hanover received the garter, after the act had passed for securing the Protestant Succession, he was appointed to carry the ensigns of the order to the electoral court 5. He sat as one of the judges of Sacheverell; but voted for a mild sentence. Being now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for summoning the electoral prince to parliament as duke of Cambridge'. At the queen's death he was appointed one of the regents; and 10 at the accession of George the First was made earl of Halifax, knight of the garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the auditorship of the Exchequer 10. More was not to be had, and this he kept On Jan. 19, 1702-3, he was accused by the Commons of a breach of trust about public moneys. On Feb. 5 the Lords voted that he had not been guilty. Parl. Hist. vi. 127, 130. 2 See Appendix D. 3 On Dec. 6, 1705, 'he moved that a day might be appointed to inquire into those dangers about which so many tragical stories had been published.' BURNET, History, iv. 110. It was carried by a large majority 'that whosoever goes about to suggest and insinuate that the Church is in danger under Her Majesty's administration is an enemy to the Queen, the Church and the Kingdom.' Parl. Hist. vi. 507. * According to the Life of Halifax, p. 137, the Union was brought about wholly owing to the Lord Halifax, who first projected the equivalent, without which it had never been accomplished.' The 'equivalent' was the sum of £398,085 given to the Scotch, 'as an equal purchase of their revenue and customs, which were to be applied to the payment of the debts of England.' Ib. p. 140. Neither Burnet nor Smollett gives this prominence to Halifax. 5 The Act was carried on Dec. 3, 1705. Parl. Hist. vi. 477. Halifax left for Hanover early in May, taking Addison with him. Life of Halifax, p. 141; post, ADDISON, 26. • Life, p. 156. Sacheverell was impeached on Jan. 12, 1709-10, and was tried before the Lords in March. Parl. Hist. vi. 809, 825. Ante, DRYDEN, 109; KING, 13; SPRAT, 17; Afterwards George II. Schutz, the Elector's envoy, was prompted to ask for this at a meeting of Whig Lords at Halifax's house on April 10, 1714. The Chancellor issued the writ; but the Queen so strongly showed her displeasure in letters to the Court of Hanover that the Prince did not come. Life, p. 223; Parl. Hist. vi. 1341. 8 His name was contained in one of the three instruments in which the Elector had nominated the persons to be added as Lords Justices to the seven great officers of the realm.' SMOLLETT, Hist. of Eng. ii. 296. 9 For Rowe's verses to him on this occasion see Eng. Poets, xxviii. 11 but a little while; for on the 19th of May, 1715, he died of an inflammation of the lungs. Of him, who from a poet became a patron of poets, it will be readily believed that the works would not miss of celebration. Addison began to praise him early ', and was followed or accompanied by other poets 2; perhaps by almost all, except Swift and Pope; who forbore to flatter him in his life, and after his death spoke of him, Swift with slight censure 3, and Pope in the character of Bufo with acrimonious contempt *. Halifax's appointment to the regency took effect, from the King's arrival in England on Sept. 18. On Oct. 5 Halifax was made first commissioner of the treasury, on Oct. 16 K.G., and on Oct. 19 Earl. In 1694, in An Account of the Greatest English Poets, among whom Shakespeare is conspicuous by his absence and Halifax by his presence; a second time, in 1697, in the Dedication of Pax, &c.; and a third time, in 1701, in A Letter from Italy. Post, ADDISON, 14, 18, 21. 2 Among others by Stepney, Eng. Poets, xvii. 181; Smith, ib. xxv. 3; Rowe, ib. xxviii. 221; Hughes, ib. xxxi. 23; Congreve, ib. xxxiv. 146; Works, 1788, i. 75; Tickell, Eng. Poets, xxxix. 219; Somervile, ib. xl. 237. Steele dedicated to him the fourth volume of The Tatler and the second volume of The Spectator. Gay describes him as having, 'The surest judgment, and the brightest wit, Himself a Maecenas and a Flaccus too.' Eng. Poets, xxxvi. 296. Addison begins his Dedication to him:- Quum tanta auribus tuis obstrepat vatum nequissimorum turba.' Works, i. 232. In this 'turba' was Durfey, whose Dedication of his Don Quixote is ridiculed by Collier in his Short View, 3rd ed. p. 207. In the Threnodia of the University of Cambridge on the death of Prince George are three sets of verses by Bentley-'the first to the widowed Queen, the second 'to the Tomb, and the third to Halifax.' Monk's Bentley, i. 187. Dennis dedicated to him his Letters upon Several Occasions. Le Clerc asked leave to dedicate to him his Livy. Swift's Works, xv. 317. Kuster dedicated to him his Aristophanes. Hearne's Remains, i. 171. He has one claim to the gratitude of scholars. He induced the House of Lords to have the public records put into better order, and he tried to get a public library established. Burnet's Hist. iv. 117. 36 'Thus Congreve spent in writing plays, And one poor office, half his days; To be Maecenas of the nation, Himself as rich as fifty Jews shoes.' SWIFT, Works, xiv. 388. 'His encouragements of learned men were only good words and good dinners.' Ib. xii. 226. Swift wrote in 1735-'Of the letters from my Lord Halifax I burnt all but one; which I keep as a most admirable original of Court promises and professions.' Ib. xviii. 295. See also ib. ii. 30. For Swift's flattery of him in 1709 see his two letters to him in Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 201. * 'Proud as Apollo on his forked hill in song.' Prol. Sat. 1. 231. He was, as Pope says, 'fed with dedications "'; for Tickell 12 affirms that no dedicator was unrewarded 2. To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always in some degree subject to affection. Very near to admiration is the wish to admire 3. Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, 13 and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of discernment. We admire in a friend that understanding that selected us for confidence; we admire more in a patron that judgement which, instead of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and, if the patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to blame, affection will easily dispose us to exalt. To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power 14 always operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The modesty of praise wears gradually away; and perhaps the pride of patronage may be in time so increased that modest praise will no longer please. Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax which he 15 would never have known, had he had no other attractions than those of his poetry, of which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Montague *. APPENDIX D (PAGE 45) By the Test Act passed in 1673 and not repealed till 1828, all officeholders had to publicly receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. Many Nonconformists complied once, and never went to church again. By the bill of 1702 against Occasional Conformity all such persons were to be disabled from holding their employments,' and were exposed to ruinous fines. It was rejected by the Lords, but was renewed in 1703 and 1704. It was carried in 1711, with the omission of the fines. Macaulay's Hist. i. 231; Burnet's Hist. iii. 371, iv. 25, 71, 281; Parl. Hist. vi. 59, 154, 359, 1045. Mere nonconformity was by law a crime. Blackstone's Com. iv. 50, 54. In The Spectator for Jan. 8, 1711-12, No. 269, Addison tells how 'Sir Roger believed the late Act already began to take effect; for that a rigid dissenter, who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas Day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge.' William Bromley, on Nov. 28, 1704, spoke in favour of tacking the bill on to the Land Tax Bill. Parl. Hist. vi. 359. Parliament was dissolved on April 5, 1705. Ib. p. 439. 'The Church in danger' was the Tory cry during the elections. Burnet's Hist. iv. 99. A pamphlet, said to be Mr. Bromley's speech, soon saw the light.' Halifax replied to it in An Answer to Mr. B's Speech, in a Letter to a Friend, 'which had such an influence on the elections that the major part of them were in favour of the Low Church Men.' Life of Halifax, pp. 113, 130. See post, GRANVILLE, 18. PARNELL 'HE Life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very 1 THE willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Gold smith', a man of such variety of powers and such felicity of performance that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness. What such an author has told, who would tell again? I have 2 made an abstract from his larger narrative; and have this gratification from my attempt that it gives me an opportunity of paying due tribute to the memory of Goldsmith. Τὸ γὰρ γέρας ἐστὶ θανόντων 3. THOMAS PARNELL was the son of a commonwealthsman of 3 the same name, who at the Restoration left Congleton in Cheshire, where the family had been established for several centuries, and, settling in Ireland, purchased an estate, which, with his lands in Cheshire, descended to the poet, who was born at Dublin in 1679; and, after the usual education at a grammar school, was at the age of thirteen admitted into the College 5, where in 1700 In 1770. Forster's Goldsmith, 1871, ii. 223; Goldsmith's Works, iv. 129. the 'Goldsmith's Life of Parnell is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials.' JOHNSON, Boswell's Johnson, ii. 166. Goldsmith's father and uncle had known Parnell. In apologizing for absence of facts in the narrative of his youth he writes :-' A poet, while living, is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much attention.... When his fame is increased by time it is then too late to investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of the morning are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian splendour.' Gold smith's Works, iv. 130. 2 Johnson said of Goldsmith:Whether we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 236. In his epitaph he describes him as one 'qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.' Ib. iii. 82. Mr. G. A. Aitken, in the Preface to Parnell's Poems, 1894, has brought together the facts known about the poet. Odyssey, xxiv. 190. 3 4 Charles Stewart Parnell was descended from the poet's younger brother. Post, SWIFT, 77 n. 5 He was admitted much sooner than usual, as they are a great deal stricter in their examination for |