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As enormities grew every day less supportable he found it necessary to concur in the Revolution. He was one of those Lords who sat every day in council to preserve the publick peace, after the king's departure 1; and, what is not the most illustrious action of his life, was employed to conduct the Princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard2, such as might alarm the populace as they passed with false apprehensions of her danger. Whatever end may be designed, there is always something despicable in a trick.

He became, as may be easily supposed, a favourite of King William, who, the day after his accession, made him lord chamberlain of the household 3, and gave him afterwards the garter. He happened to be among those that were tossed with the King in an open boat sixteen hours, in very rough and cold weather, on the coast of Holland 5. His health afterwards declined; and on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.

He was a man whose elegance and judgement were universally confessed', and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known 8. To the indulgent affection of the publick Lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark: 'I know

thick rows of Earls and Barons by whom he was watched, and before whom, in the next Parliament, he might stand at the bar.' MACAULAY, History, iii. 115.

* Ib. iii. 295; Collins's Peerage, i. 776.

2

Eng. Poets, xxxii. 131.

It

'They could not safely attempt to reach William's quarters; for the road thither lay through a country occupied by the royal forces. was therefore determined that Anne should take refuge with the northern insurgents.' MACAULAY, History, iii. 260.

3 Collins's Peerage, i. 776. Smollett describes him as a man of 'invincible indolence.' History, i. 316.

On Feb. 3, 1690-1. Collins's Peerage, i. 777.

Ib. p. 777. It was in January 1690-1. 'When the King got within the Maese, so that it was thought two hours' rowing would bring him to land, being weary of the sea he went into an open boat with some of his Lords; but by mists and storms he was tossed up and down above

sixteen hours before he got safe to land. Yet neither he, nor any of those who were with him, were the worse for all this cold and wet weather.' BURNET, Hist. iii. 78.

'Let my friends wish me,' wrote Pope, as long a life as they please, I should not wish it to myself with the allay of great or much pain. My old Lord Dorset said very well in that case the tenure is not worth the fine.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), ix. 103. Pope perhaps had this in mind when he wrote:'Ease, health and life for this they must resign;

Unsure the tenure, but how vast the fine!'

POPE, The Temple of Fame, 1. 507.

7 He had the greatest wit tempered with the greatest candour, and was one of the finest critics as well as the best poets of his age.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 85. See also Horace Walpole's Works, i. 425.

'He was the support of all the poets of his time.' Jacob's Poetical Register, ii. 174. For his kindness to Prior see post, PRIOR, 2.

not how it is, but Lord Buckhurst may do what he will, yet is never in the wrong '.'

If such a man attempted poetry we cannot wonder that his 14 works were praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not known to have so well deserved them3, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superior to those of antiquity, says, 'I would instance your Lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy? Would it be imagined that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas ❝? The blame however of this

"It was in fact true, what the Earl of Rochester said in jest to King Charles-that he did not know how it was, but my Lord Dorset might do anything, yet was never to blame.' PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 133.

Rochester wrote of him: 'For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose,

The best good man, with the worstnatured Muse.'

Eng. Poets, xv. 65. 'Never was so much ill-nature in a pen as in his, joined with so much good-nature as was in himself even to excess; for he was against all punishing, even of malefactors.' BURNET, Hist. i. 294.

"Yet soft in nature, though severe
his lay,

His anger moral, and his wisdom
gay.'
Post, POPE, 387.

Post, DRYDEN, 137. For his giving Dryden a banknote for £100 at a Christmas Day dinner see Jacob's Poetical Register, ii. 16, quoted in Malone's Dryden, i. 452.

3 For Dryden's 'abject adulation' see post, DRYDEN, 170.

Dryden's Works, xiii. 14; post, DRYDEN, 27.

'Dryden determines by him [Dorset], under the character of Eugenius, as to the laws of dramatic poetry [in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Works, xv. 301] PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 127. Malone points out that Crites' character better suits him, who is described as 'a person of a sharp

exaggerated praise falls on the 15

judgment, and somewhat too delicate a taste in wit, which the world have mistaken in him for ill-nature [Works, xv. 285].' Malone's Dryden, vol. i. pt. 2; Essay on Dram. Poesy, p. 35 n. Whichever he is, there is this inconsistency, that while he was one of the boating party on the Thames who 'perceived the air to break about them like the noise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a chimney, on that memorable day when our navy engaged the Dutch' (Dryden's Works, xv. 283), he was himself fighting in the battle. Ante, DORSET, 5.

5 'The gentleman had always so much the better of the satirist that the persons touched were forced to appear rather ashamed than angry.' PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxii. 129.

The following lines addressed to the Hon. Edward Howard do not show much of 'the gentleman':'Sure hasty pudding is thy chiefest dish,

With bullock's liver, or some stinking fish ;

Garbage, ox-cheeks, and tripes do feast thy brain,

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Which nobly pays this tribute back again.' Ib. xvii. 148. His poems are contained in twentyfour pages of Eng. Poets, pp. 14771. Malone thinks 'all his satires have not come down to us, at least with his name.' Malone's Dryden, iii. 80.

For his pieces in State Poems, vol. iii, see Spence's Anec. p. 157.

encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit, gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard' shew great fertility of mind, and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope 3.

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STEPNEY'

EORGE STEPNEY, descended from the Stepneys of 1 Pendegrast [Prendergast] in Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster in 1663. Of his father's condition or fortune I have no account. Having received the first part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the College, he went at nineteen to Cambridge 3, where he continued a friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax. They came to London together, and are said to have been invited into publick life by the Duke of Dorset 5.

His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employ-2 ments, so that his time seems to have been spent in negotiations. In 1692 he was sent envoy to the Elector of Brandenburgh; in 1693 to the Imperial Court; in 1694 to the Elector of Saxony; in 1696 to the Electors of Mentz and Cologne, and the Congress at Francfort; in 1698 a second time to Brandenburgh; in 1699 to the King of Poland; in 1701 again to the Emperor; and in 1706 to the States General. In 1697 he was made one of the commissioners of trade. His life was busy, and not long.

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Johnson's authority in this Life is Jacob's Poetical Register, ii. 205.

2 He was Groom of the Chamber to Charles II. Dict. Nat. Biog. Horace Walpole is wrong in stating that his mother was Vandyke's daughter. Anec. of Painting, ed. 1888, i. 336. Sir John Stepney, the fourth baronet, was her husband. Cokayne's Complete Baronetage, i. 178. The poet's mother was Mary, daughter of Sir Bernard Whetstone, Knt. Dict. Nat. Biog.

3 He was elected Scholar of Trinity College in 1682, and Fellow in 1687. Dict. Nat. Biog.

Post, HALIFAX, 2. Stepney bequeathed to him 'a golden cup and a hundred tomes of his library.' Addison's Works, v. 363.

5 The sixth Earl of Dorset.

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He died in 1707, and is buried in Westminster-Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob transcribed 1.

H. S. E.

GEORGIUS STEPNEIUS, Armiger,
Vir

Ob Ingenii acumen,
Literarum Scientiam,
Morum Suavitatem,
Rerum Usum,

Virorum Amplissimorum Consuetudinem,
Linguæ, Styli, ac Vitæ Elegantiam,

Præclara Officia cum Britanniæ tum Europæ præstita,
Sua ætate multum celebratus;
Apud posteros semper celebrandus;
Plurimas Legationes obiit
Ea Fide, Diligentia, ac Felicitate,
Ut Augustissimorum Principum
Gulielmi et Annæ

Spem in illo repositam
Numquam fefellerit,
Haud raro superaverit.

Post longum honorum Cursum
Brevi Temporis Spatio confectum,
Cum Naturæ parum, Famæ satis vixerat,
Animam ad altiora aspirantem placide efflavit.

On the Left Hand:

G. S.

Ex Equestri Familia Stepneiorum,
De Pendegrast, in Comitatu
Pembrochiensi oriundus,

Westmonasterii natus est, A.D. 1663.
Electus in Collegium

Sancti Petri Westmonast. A. 1676.
Sanctæ Trinitatis Cantab. 1682.
Consiliariorum quibus Commercii
Cura commissa est 1697.
Chelseiæ mortuus, et, comitante
Magna procerum

Frequentia, huc elatus, 1707 2.

3 It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney made grey authors blush 3. I know not whether his poems will appear

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