Part 57 (1/2)

Being, by the duke of Monmouth, opposed in his pretensions to the first troop of horse-guards, he, in return, made Monmouth suspected by the duke of York. He was not long after, when the unlucky Monmouth fell into disgrace, recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorks.h.i.+re and the government of Hull.

Thus rapidly did he make his way both to military and civil honours and employments; yet, busy as he was, he did not neglect his studies, but, at least, cultivated poetry; in which he must have been early considered as uncommonly skilful, if it be true which is reported, that, when he was yet not twenty years old, his recommendation advanced Dryden to the laurel.

The Moors having besieged Tangier, he was sent, 1680, with two thousand men to its relief. A strange story is told of danger to which he was intentionally exposed in a leaky s.h.i.+p, to gratify some resentful jealousy of the king, whose health he, therefore, would never permit at his table, till he saw himself in a safer place. His voyage was prosperously performed in three weeks; and the Moors, without a contest, retired before him.

In this voyage he composed the Vision; a licentious poem, such as was fas.h.i.+onable in those times, with little power of invention or propriety of sentiment.

At his return he found the king kind, who, perhaps, had never been angry; and he continued a wit and a courtier, as before.

At the succession of king James, to whom he was intimately known, and by whom he thought himself beloved, he naturally expected still brighter suns.h.i.+ne; but all know how soon that reign began to gather clouds. His expectations were not disappointed; he was immediately admitted into the privy council, and made lord chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high commission, without knowledge, as he declared after the revolution, of its illegality. Having few religious scruples, he attended the king to ma.s.s, and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive the Romish faith, or to force it upon others; for when the priests, encouraged by his appearances of compliance, attempted to convert him, he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in G.o.d, who made the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded ”that man was quits, and made G.o.d again.”

A pointed sentence is bestowed by successive transmission on the last whom it will fit: this censure of transubstantiation, whatever be its value, was uttered long ago by Anne Askew, one of the first sufferers for the protestant religion, who, in the time of Henry the eighth, was tortured in the Tower; concerning which there is reason to wonder that it was not known to the historian of the reformation.

In the revolution he acquiesced, though he did not promote it. There was once a design of a.s.sociating him in the invitation of the prince of Orange; but the earl of Shrewsbury discouraged the attempt, by declaring that Mulgrave would never concur. This king William afterwards told him; and asked what he would have done if the proposal had been made? ”Sir,”

said he, ”I would have discovered it to the king whom I then served.” To which king William replied, ”I cannot blame you.”

Finding king James irremediably excluded, he voted for the conjunctive sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the t.i.tles of the prince and his consort equal, and it would please the prince, their protector, to have a share in the sovereignty. This vote gratified king William; yet, either by the king's distrust or his own discontent, he lived some years without employment. He looked on the king with malevolence, and, if his verses or his prose may be credited, with contempt. He was, notwithstanding this aversion or indifference, made marquis of Normanby, 1694; but still opposed the court on some important questions; yet, at last, he was received into the cabinet council, with a pension of three thousand pounds.

At the accession of queen Anne, whom he is said to have courted when they were both young, he was highly favoured. Before her coronation. 1702, she made him lord privy seal, and, soon after, lord lieutenant of the north Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re. He was then named commissioner for treating with the Scots about the union; and was made, next year, first, duke of Normanby, and then of Buckinghams.h.i.+re, there being suspected to be somewhere a latent claim to the t.i.tle of Buckingham[208].

Soon after, becoming jealous of the duke of Marlborough, he resigned the privy seal, and joined the discontented tories in a motion, extremely offensive to the queen, for inviting the princess Sophia to England.

The queen courted him back with an offer no less than that of the chancellors.h.i.+p; which he refused. He now retired from business, and built that house in the Park, which is now the queen's, upon ground granted by the crown.

When the ministry was changed, 1710, he was made lord chamberlain of the household, and concurred in all transactions of that time, except that he endeavoured to protect the Catalans. After the queen's death, he became a constant opponent of the court; and, having no publick business, is supposed to have amused himself by writing his two tragedies. He died February 24, 1720-21.

He was thrice married; by his first two wives he had no children; by his third, who was the daughter of king James, by the countess of Dorchester, and the widow of the earl of Anglesey, he had, besides other children that died early, a son born in 1716, who died in 1735, and put an end to the line of Sheffield. It is observable, that the duke's three wives were all widows. The dutchess died in 1742.

His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes; and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments with respect to women he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles concerning property were such as a gaming-table supplies. He was censured as covetous, and has been defended by an instance of inattention to his affairs; as if a man might not at once be corrupted by avarice and idleness. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologize for his violences of pa.s.sion.

He is introduced into this collection only as a poet; and, if we credit the testimony of his contemporaries, he was a poet of no vulgar rank. But favour and flattery are now at an end; criticism is no longer softened by his bounties, or awed by his splendour; and, being able to take a more steady view, discovers him to be a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely s.h.i.+nes; feebly laborious, and, at best, but pretty. His songs are upon common topicks; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas: to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power[209].

In the Essay on Satire he was always supposed to have had the help of Dryden. His Essay on Poetry is the great work for which he was praised by Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope; and, doubtless, by many more, whose eulogies have perished.

Upon this piece he appears to have set a high value; for he was all his life improving it by successive revisals, so that there is scarcely any poem to be found of which the last edition differs more from the first.

Amongst other changes, mention is made of some compositions of Dryden, which were written after the first appearance of the essay.