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observes, that in the office of the church, before matrimony, we are enjoined "to consider it as a mystical union" between "Christ and his church," and as such forbidden "to take it in hand unadvisedly or lightly;" with an express interdict of the "design of satisfying man's carnal appetites." But that the moment the marriage is completed, the same au̟thority declares, that nothing can dissolve it but a deficience of carnality.

[George was the second and last earl of Warrington; for dying without male issue,, the earldom ceased with him in 1758. 4 The ancient barony of Grey descended. His only daughter married Henry, earl of Stamford, in whose son the title has been revived. Dr. Lort pointed out

"A Letter by this Nobleman, to the Writer of the present State of the Republick of Letters, in August

permit the alienation of a certain evil than it did the appropriation of a casual good: whence "conjugal love, which requires not only moral but natural causes to the making and maintaining, may be warrantably excused to retire from the deception of what it justly seeks, and the ill requitals which it unjustly finds." Prose Works, vol. i. p. 369. This doctrine was powerfully and scripturally interdicted by the late bishop of London. See Brit. Crit. for Oct. 1806, p. 417.]

4 Bolton's Extinct Peerage, p. 86.

1734; vindicating his Father Henry, Earl of Warrington, from some Reflections cast on him in Bishop Burnet's History of his own Times."

With filial respect for the memory of his father, it displays an honourable zeal to rescue his character from the taint of an injurious aspersion. The historical annalist had recorded, that "the earl of Monmouth being made first commissioner of the treasury, and the earl of Warrington chancellor of the exchequer; the former was generous, and gave the inferior places freely; and the other (they said) sold every thing that was in his power."5 To which the son replies, with a noble though vindictive dignity": "Were my father alive, I presume this passage would bear an action of scandalum magnatum against the publisher: and had the bishop been living, he would have been hard put to it to have supported an assertion so contrary to the character my father uninterruptedly bore, of a generous, liberal, and upright man. Every body who was acquainted with him, knowing his temper to be the very reverse of what this prelate pictures him; that he was rather careless in matters of money, far from greedy after it, much farther from seeking it in any mean or indirect way. Had he been such, he had a few years before a far greater opportunity to have filled his pockets, than what could have arisen from the sale of petty places, in an offer made him when he lay close prisoner in

Hist. vol. iii. p. 6.

Vid. Historia Litteraria, vol xiv. p. 153.

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the Tower, together with assurance of his life: both which he rejected; chusing rather to trust Providence to vindicate his innocence in a legal way, than accept an ignominious pardon, though accompanied with a large pecuniary reward. With what intent the bishop inserted this passage I can easily conceive; and it would reflect no honour on him to have me tell my sentiments, and on what good reason founded. "The bishop says, that an historian must tell things truly as they are, and leave the descanting on them to others.' But there lies no obligation on an historian to take away the good name of any man, in the aggravating manner I have mention'd, when it no ways concerns his history and even if his history had required it, it was incumbent on him to have fully informed himself, before he had inserted any thing derogatory to a man's character and reputation. Or if he flatter'd himself that by his interjection (as I may call it) of they said, to salve his assertion from being a direct falsity; yet that very salvo makes him the more blameable, to fix by a mere hearsay a dishonourable reflection on a deceased man of quality, and (except by him) of unblemish'd honour and reputation; especially knowing how much more prone the world is to imbibe a bad than a good character of any man, and would think themselves Justified in entertaining an ill opinion on so great an authority.

"Should I say all I could on the matter, it would swell to a volume instead of a letter; I must therefore stop. But a dutiful regard to the memory of my

father has led me into this prolixity; for indeed it raised my indignation to read the passage I blame. And as I am not stoic enough to be unmoved at so vile a reflection on him; so whatever I have here said ought to be looked on as a just resentment, not a falling into the crime I condemn in the bishop-of speaking evil of the dead,

"Sir, yours, &c.

"WARRINGTON."]

RICHARD EDGECUMBE,

LORD MOUNT EDGECUMBE,

THE second peer of a family distinguished by talents, integrity, and honour, must be added to the foregoing list, though with a slenderer portion of fame than his genius deserved and promised, as very few of his compositions have been printed, as the best of them were too strongly marked by the warmth of his age and imagination to be fit for the public eye, and as all of them were the productions of his most careless hours. He was a poet from fancy, not from meditation; yet he pos sessed those graces which study cannot give, ease and harmony, the fruits of taste and a good ear. What elegance might he not have attained, had application been added to strong parts, to humour that was the result of truth, and to wit that never was the offspring of ill nature!

These encomiums hereafter will sound like flattery, No: friendship feels, but justice dictates; and very many who knew lord Edgecumbe, know they are not exaggerated. As

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