my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance; and the separation made, I discover on one side a legion of enemies, at least of strangers. Happily this fiery trial has had an effect on me, which makes me some amends: I have found less resource in other people, and more in myself than I expected. My fortune is extremely reduced; but my desires are still more so: and nothing is more certain than this truth, that all our wants beyond those which a very moderate income will supply, are purely imaginary ; and that his happiness is greater and better assured, who brings his mind up to a temper of not feeling them, than his who feels them, and has wherewithall to supply them."

The name of Bolingbroke has been rapturously lauded by Smollett and Belsham 6, while his infidel reveries have been ably refuted by Warburton and Leland. Lord Walpole, who knew him well, calls him a wicked impostor and a charlatan. Dr. Blair, a more unbiassed judge, has given it as his opinion, that "there are few writings in the English language which for the matter contained in them, can be read with less profit than lord Bolingbroke's works, whose only merit is their lively and eloquent style." This, in truth, is a most mischievous merit, when it tends to make poison palatable.]

6 Young termed him "peaceful Bolingbroke," in his epistle to lord Lansdown. In Coxe's Memoirs of sir Robert Walpole, see the speaker Onslow's delineation of him; or the Monthly Review for Dec. 1809.

7 Lectures on Rhetoric, vol. i. p.377.

HAD

FRANCES THYNNE,

DUCHESS OF SOMERSET,

AD as much taste for the writings of others, as modesty about her own.

[This lady was the mother of Elizabeth, duchess of Northumberland, by Algernon, earl of Hertford, and seventh duke of Somerset, being herself the daughter and coheir of Henry Thynne, eldest son of Thomas, first viscount Weymouth. Having only one son who died a minor, the younger branch of Seymour Somerset became extinct, and sir Edward Seymour of the elder branch succeeded to the dukedom; it having been settled in the patent that the sons of the second wife should inherit first. 2 Her grace was one of the ladies of the bedchamber to queen Caroline, and appears to have lived in the greatest conjugal harmony with duke Algernon, and to have conducted herself through the whole tenor of her life with becoming dignity and affability. After the demise of the duke in 1750, she lived in retirement at Percy Lodge, near Colnbrook, till her own death on July 7. 1754.3

• Bolton's Extinct Peerage, p. 264.

Collins's Peerage, vol. v. p. 495.