LETTER OF LADY DORSET'S.

105

herself and her progenitors,' as well as 'Memoirs of her husband, Richard, Earl of Dorset' never printed.

The heiress of the Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland, this lady was munificent, religious, and disposed to letters.' She was active in other respects; it was she who placed the monument over the remains of Edmund Spenser, as well as one over those of Daniel the poet. She founded two hospitals, and repaired six castles and seven churches. Thus nobly did she expend her wealth; but, when roused, she was a lioness in fierceness. Having committed the fatal error of marrying a second time, him whom Walpole calls that memorable simpleton, Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, she soon separated from him. The capital story of her answer to Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of State to Charles the Second, who ventured to nominate to her a member for the borough of Appleby, is well known.

‘I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a Court, but I am not to be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand.

ANNE DORSET,

'PEMBROKE and MONTGOMERY,'

After his retirement from office, Lord Dorset continued to appear sometimes at the Council as a mark of respect to the Government. But he had never recovered the effects of a voyage with King William to the Hague. He was, therefore, as one of his biographers well expresses it, giving as much leisure to the relief of those pains with which it had pleased God to afflict him, and indulging the reflection of a mind that had looked through the world with too piercing an eye, and was grown weary of the prospect,' retreated with dignity from a station he was now incapacitated to fill. Friend, patron, host, inestimable in all those characters, he continued to the last. He died at Bath in 1705-6, on the 19th of January, and was buried with his ancestors at Withiam.

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THE ESSAYISTS OF COMMON LIFE.

With Dorset a circle of clever, rather than of great men, was broken up; but a new era was approaching-the Augustan age was at hand: fresh assemblies of ardent politicians and of shameless libellers were henceforth to be found in other houses, and in various localities; and amid these, arose a class of men hitherto unknown, the essayists of common life -Steele, Addison, Tickell, and their numerous imitators.

CHAPTER V.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

JOURNALS.

QUEEN ANNE'S REIGN.

THE INCREASE OF PUBLIC THE INFERIOR EDUCATION OF WOMEN ALLUDED TO BY ADDISON. ONE DESIGN OF THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR TO IMPROVE THIS. THE STEELE AND ADDISON. LONDON GAZETTE. CHARACTER OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. FAMOUS EXPEDITION TO SCOTLAND. ANECDOTE BY SIR WALTER SCOTT. STEELE'S CHARACTER.-CIBBER'S DESCRIPTION OF STEELE. HIS WIFE'S CON

TATLER; ITS ORIGIN. -THE SPECTATOR.

THE

STEELE'S

HIS REMORSE.

SPECIMENS OF STEELE'S STYLE OF

FULLER'S PROVERB.

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CHAPTER V.

FULLER, in one of his proverbs, says, 'There is much more learning than knowledge in the world.' The public, in the commencement of the eighteenth century, seem to have acknowledged this truth; a thirst for general knowledge was prevalent; a want was found and felt; and that want was supplied.

Some slight notion has been given, in a preceding chapter, of the condition of the periodical press, and of the meagre and constrained intelligence afforded by newspapers. That source of information, imperfect as it still was, had been terribly interrupted during the civil wars, by the confusion and hindrance produced in the Post Office, an institution which we owe to Charles the First. On the accession of William and Mary it was put on a more secure footing, and on a more extended plan than previously: and many of the leading journals were published expressly on the days most convenient to despatch them by post into the country; so that the public were accommodated.

The public journals had been rapidly increasing, and between the years 1661 and 1688 about seventy different ones had appeared. Of these, the London Gazette' is the only one that still exists; it still deals with drawing-rooms at court, or promotions at the Horse Guards; still prescribes how ladies, when a royal personage dies, shall have their linen