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where by a bold metaphor,―a green old age; but Virgil has given me his authority for the figure:

Jam senior; sed cruda deo viridisque senectus.

Amongst those few who enjoy the advantage of a latter spring, your Lordship is a rare example; who being now arrived at your great climacterick, yet give no proof of the least decay in your excellent judgment and comprehension of all things which are within the compass of human understanding. Your conversation is as easy as it is instructive, and I could never observe the least vanity or the least assuming in any thing you said; but a natural unaffected modesty, full of good sense, and well digested: a clearness of notion, expressed in ready and unstudied words. No man has complained, or ever can, that you have discoursed too long on any subject; for you leave us in an eagerness of learning more; pleased with what we hear, but not satisfied, because you will not speak so much as we could wish. I dare not excuse your Lordship from this fault; for though it is none in you, it is one to all who have the happiness of being known to you. I must confess the criticks make it one of Virgil's beautics, that having said what he thought convenient, he always left somewhat for the imagination of his readers to supply; that they might gratify their fancies, by finding more in what he had written, than at first they could, and think they had added to his thought, when it was all there

beforehand, and he only saved himself the expence of words. However it was, I never went from your Lordship, but with a longing to return, or without a hearty curse to him who invented ceremonies in the world, and put me on the necessity of withdrawing, when it was my interest, as well as my desire, to have given you a much longer trouble. I cannot imagine (if your Lordship will give me leave to speak my thoughts) but you have had a more than ordinary vigour in your youth; for too much of heat is required at first, that there may not too little be left at last. A prodigal fire is only capable of large remains; and yours, my Lord, still burns the clearer in declining. The blaze is not so fierce as at the first, but the smoke is wholly vanished; and your friends who stand about you, are not only sensible of a cheerful warmth, but are kept at an awful distance by its force. In my small observations of mankind, I have ever found, that such as are not rather too full of spirit when they are young, degenerate to dullness in their age. Sobriety in our riper years is the effect of a well-concocted warmth; but where the principles are only phlegm, what can be expected from the waterish matter, but an insipid manhood, and a stupid old infancy; discretion in leading-strings, and a confirmed ignorance on crutches? Virgil in his third Georgick, when he describes a colt who promises a courser for the race, or for the field of battle, shews him the first to pass the bridge, which trembles under him, and

to stem the torrent of the flood. His beginnings must be in rashness, a noble fault; but time and experience will correct that errour, and tame it into a deliberate and well-weighed courage; which knows both to be cautious and to dare, as occasion offers. Your Lordship is a man of honour, not only so unstained, but so unquestioned, that you are the living standard of that heroick virtue; so truly such, that if I would flatter you, I could not. It takes not from you, that you were born with principles of generosity and probity; but it adds to you, that you have cultivated nature, and made those principles the rule and measure of all your actions. The world knows this without my telling; yet poets have a right of recording it to all posterity:

Dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori.

Epaminondas, Lucullus, and the two first Cæsars, were not esteemed the worse commanders, for having made philosophy and the liberal arts their study. Cicero might have been their equal, but that he wanted courage. To have both these virtues, and to have improved them both with a softness of manners, and a sweetness of conversation, few of our nobility can fill that character: one there is, and so conspicuous by his own light, that he needs not

digito monstrari, et dicier hic est.

To be nobly born, and of an ancient family, is in the extremes of fortune, either good or bad;

for virtue and descent are no inheritance. A long series of ancestors shews the native with great advantage at the first; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on erinine. But to preserve this whiteness in its original purity, you, my Lord, have, like that ermine, forsaken the common track of business, which is not always clean: you have chosen for yourself a private greatness, and will not be polluted with ambition. It has been observed in former times, that none have been so greedy of employments, and of managing the publick, as they who have least deserved their stations; but such only merit to be called patriots, under whom we see their country flourish. I have laughed sometimes, (for who would always be a Heraclitus?) when I have reflected on those men, who, from time to time, have shot themselves into the world. I have seen many successions of them; some bolting out upon the stage with vast applause, and others hissed off, and quitting it with disgrace. But while they were in action, I have constantly observed, that they seemed desirous to retreat from business: greatness, they said, was nauseous, and a crowd was troublesome; a quiet privacy was their ambition. Some few of them I believe said this in earnest, and were making a provision against future want, that they might enjoy their age with ease. They saw the happiness of a private life, and promised to themselves a blessing which every day it was in their power to possess ;

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but they deferred it, and lingered still at court, because they thought they had not yet enough to make them happy. They would have more, and laid in to make their solitude luxurious: a wretched philosophy, which Epicurus never taught them in his garden. They loved the prospect of this quiet in reversion, but were not willing to have it in possession; they would first be old, and made as sure of health and life, as if both of them were at their dispose. But put them to the necessity of a present choice, and they preferred continuance in power like the wretch who called death to his assistance, but refused it when he came. The great Scipio was not of their opinion; who indeed sought honours in his youth, and endured the fatigues with which he purchased them. He served his country when it was in need of his courage and his conduct, till he thought it was time to serve himself; but dismounted from the saddle, when he found the beast which bore him, began to grow restiff and ungovernable. But your

4 Fabius Maximus, Cato the Censor, and Tiberius Gracchus, father of the celebrated Gracchi, being jealous of the great popularity and power of Scipio Africanus the elder, commenced a prosecution against him, A. U. C. 565. Disdaining to vindicate his character before the fickle multitude, he refused to obey the summons for his appearance, retiring to his villa at Liternum, near Naples, where he died in the year 568.-See VALERIUS MAXIMUS, l. v. c. 3. "Africanus Superior non solum contusam et confractam belli Punici armis rempublicam, sed

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