prince, I believe Europe will come to its fuccour; but should we be abandoned, and left to ourselves, if vanquished, I then fall, and shall perish with my country.

Character of the Duke of Ormond.

TH

From the fame.

'HIS duke was bleffed with a most noble fortune, and it fell into very good hands; for no perfon was of a more generous hofpitable difpofition: he was the moft popular man of his time, head of the ancient, opulent, and numerous family of the Butlers, both an English and an Irish duke, commander in chief of the English army in Flanders, when the great duke of Marlborough, by the intrigues of the party that then prevailed in England, was recalled home. He was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and I believe of Dublin, knight of the garter, and had all the honours conferred on him that his country could bestow; and his princely generous difpofition became them well, and in fome measure fupported his underftanding, which when analyzed from real facts, was but weak, and not truly fincere and honeft, but, like great part of mankind, not very moral. He received honours, great places of truft and profit, from King William, queen Anne, and of courfe was obliged to take the teft oath of allegiance and abjuration to thofe refpective princes: yet at the fame time he encouraged Jaco bitifm, and, among his friends, profeffed himself the greatest friend and adherent to the houfe of Stuart. This is repugnant to fincerity, ho

nefty, and, I may venture to fay, religion, which ever ought to be affociated together; because it is profeffing one thing, and being, or pretending to be, of another opinion. It is weak, because it is deftructive of the fchemes and meafures intended to be accomplished and brought about it may be faid to divide oneself against onefelf, and of courfe one's own strength and force is weakened, by endeavouring to demolish with one hand what one builds with the other.

When he was lord lieutenant of Ireland, he made, or occafioned to be made, many of the penal laws that are moft hurtful to the Irish Roman Catholics. This was not honeft, or grateful, because it was hurting those who were his best friends. It was weak, and not politic, being directly oppofite to that maxim, if you have a mind effectually to ferve yourself, fling power into the hands of your friends: and he, by his behaviour, weakened and difenabled those people from affifting him fo much as they might have done, and by whom he expected to be fupported.

He did not fuffer fo much by his attainder as many others that acted with more determined fincerity and refolution; because his brother, the earl of Arran, a very good fort of man, enjoyed and poffeffed great part of his very opulent fortune, which enabled him to perform what was dictated by brotherly affection and honefty, in paying him annually a fufficient fum to live in a moft princely manner at Avignon, where he died; from whence he was brought, and buried in Weftminster-Abbey.

Upon

Upon the whole, it is thought

From the fame.

more.

POPE.

With all his foibles and weakneffes, he might have become a very good fubject, and a useful member to fociety, particularly to Ireland, his native country, when he had feen his errors; for to do the Irish juftice, with whom the writer is well acquainted, ingratitude doth not feem to be among their national vices. That he would have seen his errors, and have corrected them, there is the greatest probability and reafon to think, because it is credibly af ferted, and I believe known, that he abfolutely refufed, directly or indirectly, to be concerned in any of the confufions and troubles that happened in his country in the year 1745. Why not change his opinions, or correct his errors? It is never too late to mend, or own you have been in the wrong, which is next to being in the right. Some of his friends aver, that he never externally profeffed a thing, but what he internally believed at the time, and was fincere: this is very difficult to credit, as it rarely happens in fuch frequent changes; efpecially as he feldom veered but when his intereft or power was thereby enlarged: but if it be true, it only fhews a weakness, and a mutability of difpofition liable to the influence of others.

Cardinal

Ardinal Fleury was a very good and intelligent minif ter, and, upon the whole, purfued the real intereft of France. He was honeft, fincere, religious, and moral; qualifications and virtues which, when united (and it is to be wished they were oftener found in minifters) will ever, without even extraordinary and over-fhining abilities and talents, make ftatefmen ferve their country the better; because they then act upon principle, and think they are accountable for their actions to more than man, and have more than that vague and vain love of fame and popularity, or fear of punishment in this world, to incite and fpur them to the performance and execution of good in them, felves, and the prevention of evil in others; all which minifters have much in their power to do, when power falls into the hands of men of abilities, application, and good morals; which must ever take their fpring from real religion, and a

belief and hope of a future reward, and the fear of the like punifhment. Such was Cardinal Fleu ry in the beginning of his appearance in public, then preceptor to Lewis XV. and during that time he inftilled into his prince thofe real principles of religion which very apparently, upon many occafions, animate that monarch. He was a good minifter to France, because

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because he confined himself to her natural ftrength, the encouragement of her manufactures, and the improvement of the intrinfic and natural advantages with which Providence has bleffed that kingdom above all the rest of Europe; not vainly attempting to make it go out from itself, in forcing it to be, what nature and its fituation never defigned it, the firft maritime power; because then it would naturally weaken its military ftrength, which is very neceffary to fupport itself against the powerful kingdoms that furround it, and are, not without reason, jealous of its too much increafing power: befides, a well regulated and dif. ciplined military force is very ne. ceffary to keep fo lively a people in due order and fubordination.

He kept France in peace very near his whole adminiftration, which was above twenty-feven years, except a small interval of a fort of war in 1734; and that, by his very able head and humane difpofition, he hindered from fpreading, and finished without making it general, and of courfe prevented a devaftation and laughter of mankind. It is true, upon the death of the emperor, the queen of Hungary's father, he was, fomehow or other, brought into a war in his very old age, with the rest of the Germanic princes, about the divifion of the territories of that illuftrious and magnanimous princefs; foon after which he died, at the age of eightyfour.

In all human probability, had he lived, and retained his parts and understanding, which is not very common at fo very great an age, he would have finished it

much fooner. France in that wat was very fuccefsful in Flanders, though not in Germany, or by fea; and, in the writer's opinion, it was no ways advantageous to France upon the whole; for the recived more real benefit by that moft fenfible treaty whereby the acquired Lorrain, made by this great and honeft minifter, than by all its conquefts of that rich and fertile country of Austrian Flanders.

In a word, most governments have more territory and country than they improve and make good ufe of.

Some account of Mrs. Thomas, the celebrated Corinna; from the 12th volume, or Supplement to the General Biographical Dictionary lately published.

HOMAS (Mrs.) known to

the world by the poetical name of Corinna, was the child of an ancient and infirm parent, who gave her life when he was dying himself, and to whofe unhappy conftitution fhe was fole heirefs. From her very birth, which happened in 1675, he was afflicted with fevers and defluxions, and, being over. nurfed, her conftitution was fo delicate and tender, that, had she not been of a gay difpofition, and poffeffed of a vigorous mind, the muft have been more unhappy than fhe actually was.

Her father dying when the was fcarce two years old, and her mother not knowing his real circumftances, as he was fuppofed, from the fplendour of his manner of life, to be very rich, fome inconveniences were incurred, in bestowing

upon

upon him a pompous funeral, which in thofe times was fafhionable. The mother of our poetefs, in the bloom of eighteen, was condemned to the arms of this man, upwards of fixty, upon the fuppo. fition of his being wealthy, but in which he was foon miferably deceived. She difpofed of two houfes her husband kept, one in town, the other in the county of Effex, and retired into a private, but decent, country lodging. The houfe where fhe boarded was an eminent clothworker's in the county of Surry, but the people of the houfe proved very difagreeable. The lady had no converfation to divert her; the landlord was an illiterate man, and the rest of the family brutish, and unmannerly. At laft Mrs. Thomas attracted the notice of Dr. Glyffon, who obferving her at church very fplendidly dreffed, folicited her 'acquaintance. He was a valuable piece of antiquity, being then, 1683, 100 years of age. His perfon was tall, his bones very large, his hair like fnow, a venerable afpect, and a complexion which might fhame the bloom of fifteen. He enjoyed a found judgment, and a memory fo tenacious, and clear, that his company was very engaging. His vifits greatly alleviated the folitude of this lady. The last vifit he made to Mrs. Thomas, he drew on, with much attention, a pair of rich Spanish leather gloves, emboft on the backs and tops with gold embroidery, and fringed round with gold. The lady could not help expreffing her curiofity, to know the hiftory of thofe gloves, which he feemed to touch with fo much refpect. He anfwered, "I do refpect them, for the last time I had the honour of approaching my

miftrefs, queen Elizabeth, the pulled them from her own royal hands, faying, here Glyffon, wear them for my fake. I have done fo with veneration, and never drew them on, but when I had a mind to ho.. nour those whom I vifit, as I now do you; and fince you love the memory of my royal miftrefs, take them, and preferve them carefully when I am gone." The doctor then went home, and died in a few days.

This gentleman's death left her again without a companion, and an uneafinefs hung upon her, visible to the people of the houfe; who gueffing the caufe to proceed from folitude, recommended to her acquaintance another phyfician, of a different caft from the former. He was denominated by them a conjurer, and was faid to be capable of raifing the devil. This circumftance diverted Mrs. Thomas, who imagined that the man whom they called a conjurer, must have more fenfe than they understood. The doctor was invited to visit her, and appeared in a greafy black grogram, which he called his fcholar's coat; a long beard; and other marks of a philofophical negligence. brought all his little mathematical trinkets, and played over his tricks for the diverfion of the lady, whom, by a private whisper, he let into the fecrets as he performed them, that fhe might fee there was nothing of magic in the cafe. The two moft remarkable articles of his performance were, firft lighting a candle at a glass of cold water, performed by touching the brim before with phofphorus, a chymical fire which is preferved in water and burns there; and next reading the fmalleft print by a candle of fix in

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He

the