Lives of the Poets Part 27

DORSET.

Of the earl of Dorset the character has been drawn so largely and so elegantly by Prior, to whom he was familiarly known, that nothing can be added by a casual hand; and, as its author is so generally read, it would be useless officiousness to transcribe it.

Charles Sackville was born January 24, 1637. Having been educated under a private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the restoration. He was chosen into the first parliament that was called, for East Grimstead, in Suss.e.x, and soon became a favourite of Charles the second; but undertook no publick employment, being too eager of the riotous and licentious pleasures, which young men of high rank, who aspired to be thought wits, at that time imagined themselves ent.i.tled to indulge.

One of these frolicks has, by the industry of Wood, come down to posterity. Sackville, who was then lord Buckhurst, with sir Charles Sedley and sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the c.o.c.k in Bow street, by Covent garden, and, going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the populace in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the publick indignation was awakened: the crowd attempted to force the door, and, being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house.

For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds: what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killigrew and another to procure a remission from the king; but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat. In 1665, lord Buckhurst attended the duke of York, as a volunteer in the Dutch war; and was in the battle of June 3, when eighteen great Dutch ships were taken, fourteen others were destroyed, and Opdam, the admiral, who engaged the duke, was blown up beside him, with all his crew.

On the day before the battle, he is said to have composed the celebrated song, "To all you ladies now at land," with equal tranquillity of mind and prompt.i.tude of wit. Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence, that lord Buckhurst had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.

He was soon after made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and sent on short emba.s.sies to France.

In 1674, the estate of his uncle, James Cranfield, earl of Middles.e.x, came to him by its owner's death, and the t.i.tle was conferred on him the year after. In 1677, he became, by the death of his father, earl of Dorset, and inherited the estate of his family.

In 1684, having buried his first wife, of the family of Bagot, who left him no child, he married a daughter of the earl of Northampton, celebrated both for beauty and understanding.

He received some favourable notice from king James; but soon found it necessary to oppose the violence of his innovations, and with some other lords appeared in Westminster hall to countenance the bishops at their trial.

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; and, what is not the most ill.u.s.trious action of his life, was employed to conduct the princess Anne to Nottingham with a guard, such as might alarm the populace, as they pa.s.sed, 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, 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. His health afterwards declined; and, on Jan. 19, 1705-6, he died at Bath.

He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed, and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the indulgent affection of the publick, lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark: "I know 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 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 them, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superiour 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 exaggerated praise falls on the 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 show great fertility of mind; and his Dorinda has been imitated by Pope.

STEPNEY.

George Stepney, descended from the Stepneys of Pendegrast, in Pembrokeshire, was born at Westminster, in 1663. Of his father's condition or fortune I have no account[88]. Having received the first part of his education at Westminster, where he pa.s.sed six years in the college, he went, at nineteen, to Cambridge[p], 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[89].

His qualifications recommended him to many foreign employments, 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 Frankfort; in 1698, a second time to Brandenburgh; in 1699, to the king of Poland; in 1701, again to the emperour; 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. He died in 1707, and is buried in Westminster Abbey, with this epitaph, which Jacob transcribed:

H. S. E.

GEORGIUS STEPNEIUS, armiger, Vir, Ob ingenii ac.u.men, Literarum scientiam, Morum suavitatem, Rerum usum,

Virorum amplissimorum consuetudinem, Linguae, styli, ac vitae elegantiam, Praeclara officia c.u.m Britanniae tum Europae praest.i.ta, Sua aetate multum celebratus, Apud posteros semper celebrandus; Plurimas legationes obijt Ea fide, diligentia, ac felicitate, Ut augustissimorum principum Gulielmi et Annae Spem in illo repositam Numquam fefellerit, Haud raro superaverit.

Post longum honorum cursum Brevi temporis spatio confectum, c.u.m naturae parum, famae 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, Sancti Trinitatis Cantab. 1682.

Consiliariorum quibus Commercii Cura commissa est 1697.

Chelseiae mortuus, et, comitante Magna procerum Frequentia, hue elatus, 1707.

It is reported that the juvenile compositions of Stepney "made grey authors blush." I know not whether his poems will appear such wonders to the present age. One cannot always easily find the reason for which the world has sometimes conspired to squander praise. It is not very unlikely that he wrote very early as well as he ever wrote; and the performances of youth have many favourers, because the authors yet lay no claim to publick honours, and are, therefore, not considered as rivals by the distributors of fame.

He apparently professed himself a poet, and added his name to those of the other wits in the version of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious translator, and does not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may, perhaps, be found, and, now and then, a short composition may give pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature.

[Footnote 88: He was entered of Trinity college, and took his master's degree in 1689. H.]

[Footnote 89: Earl of Dorset.]

J. PHILIPS.

John Philips was born on the 30th of December, 1676, at Bampton, in Oxfordshire; of which place his father, Dr. Stephen Philips, archdeacon of Salop, was minister. The first part of his education was domestick; after which he was sent to Winchester, where, as we are told by Dr.

Sewel, his biographer, he was soon distinguished by the superiority of his exercises; and, what is less easily to be credited, so much endeared himself to his schoolfellows, by his civility and good nature, that they, without murmur or ill will, saw him indulged by the master with particular immunities. It is related, that, when he was at school, he seldom mingled in play with the other boys, but retired to his chamber; where his sovereign pleasure was to sit, hour after hour, while his hair was combed by somebody, whose service he found means to procure.[90]

At school he became acquainted with the poets, ancient and modern, and fixed his attention particularly on Milton.

In 1694, he entered himself at Christ church; a college, at that time, in the highest reputation, by the transmission of Busby's scholars to the care first of Fell, and afterwards of Aldrich. Here he was distinguished as a genius eminent among the eminent, and for friendship particularly intimate with Mr. Smith, the author of Phaedra and Hippolytus. The profession which he intended to follow was that of physick; and he took much delight in natural history, of which botany was his favourite part.

His reputation was confined to his friends and to the university; till, about 1703, he extended it to a wider circle by the Splendid Shilling, which struck the publick attention with a mode of writing new and unexpected.

This performance raised him so high, that, when Europe resounded with the victory of Blenheim, he was, probably, with an occult opposition to Addison, employed to deliver the acclamation of the tories. It is said that he would willingly have declined the task, but that his friends urged it upon him. It appears that he wrote this poem at the house of Mr.

St. John.

Blenheim was published in 1705. The next year produced his greatest work, the poem upon Cider, in two books; which was received with loud praises, and continued long to be read, as an imitation of Virgil's Georgicks, which needed not shun the presence of the original.

He then grew probably more confident of his own abilities, and began to meditate a poem on the Last Day; a subject on which no mind can hope to equal expectation.

This work he did not live to finish; his diseases, a slow consumption and an asthma, put a stop to his studies, and on Feb. 15, 1708, at the beginning of his thirty-third year, put an end to his life.

He was buried in the cathedral of Hereford; and sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards lord chancellor, gave him a monument in Westminster Abbey.

The inscription at Westminster was written, as I have heard, by Dr.

Atterbury, though commonly given to Dr. Freind.

His epitaph at Hereford:

JOHANNES PHILIPS

Obijt 15 die Feb. Anno Dom. 1708., Aetat suae 32.

Cujus Ossa si requiras, hanc urnam inspice: Si ingenium nescias, ipsius opera consule;