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of her father's sprightly wit, became the first wife of William Anne, fourth Earl of Essex. The second daughter, Charlotte, married Captain, the Honourable Robert Boyle Walsingham, of the royal navy, youngest son of Henry, first Earl of ShanCaptain Walsingham, when in command of the Thunderer, man-of-war, was lost on board that ship in the West Indies, in 1779.

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CHAPTER XVI.

GEORGE, LORD LYTTELTON.

THE chief interest in the story of this benevolent and accomplished, but now half-forgotten poet and historian, consists, as in the case of his friend, Gilbert West, in the example which he affords of an unreflecting man of pleasure and fashion having been empowered, by earnest diligence and research, not only to silence to his own satisfaction the religious doubts by which he had been infected in the society of the shallow and the licentious, but to vindicate by his writings those important Christian truths which, in the heyday and confidence of youth, he had probably been but too frequently induced to make light of in his conversation. His treatise, entitled "Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul," still lives to "comfort and help the weak-hearted," a treatise to which, in the words of Johnson, "infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer."

George Lyttelton, afterward the first Lord Lyttelton, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Baronet, of Hagley, in Worcestershire, by Chris

tian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, Baronet, of Stow, in Buckinghamshire, formerly a maid of honour to Queen Anne. The future poet was born in 1709. He is usually described, not only as having been what is called a seven months' child, but as having betrayed so little sign of life at the time he was brought into the world, that his nurse pronounced him to be still-born. Certainly his pale and lean appearance in after life lent some slight weight to the report, but on the other hand, the truth of it seems to be borne out by no family authority or tradition.'

At Eton, according to Doctor Johnson, young Lyttelton was "so much distinguished, that his exercises were recommended as models to his schoolfellows." What is more unusual at public schools, he seems to have written English verses from inclination almost as early as he composed Latin verses from compulsion. His "Soliloquy of Beauty in the Country," which was written at Eton, has not undeservedly met with commendation.

"Ah! what avails it to be young and fair,

To move with negligence, to dress with care?" etc.

From Eton he removed to Christ Church, where though he remained but for an inconsiderable time, it was long enough to confirm the reputation for scholarship which he had already established, as

'Nichols's words are, "he was thrown away by the nurse as a dead child."

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