The principal performance by which lord Melcombe will be known was posthumous in its appearance, and is termed his

66 Diary;"

but it has unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and has left him to be viewed as a courtly compound of mean compliance and political prostitution. 9

He was concerned in writing the Remembrancer, an anti-ministerial paper, published in 1744; and the avowed author of

"Occasional Observations on a double-titled Paper about the clear Produce of the Civil List Revenue, 'from Midsummer 1727 to Midsummer 1761."

Bibl. West. No. 2389.

See

To him lord Lyttelton inscribed his eclogue entitled Hope; and says, in a note, that "Mr. Dodington had written some very pretty love-verses, which have never been published." These, for the credit of the writer (as I am well informed), never ought to be published.

The following

"Elegy on the Death of Queen Caroline,” wife of George II.

was printed by Mr. Coxe from the Melcombe papers 2, and is a tribute which may probably escape the imputation of interested homage.

Europ. Mag. ubi sup.

⚫ Notwithstanding so shielding an authority, this Elegy has been attributed to Mrs. Carter, and was so ascribed in the New Foundling Hospital for Wit, vol. iii.

When Heaven's decrees a prince's fate ordain,
A kneeling people supplicate in vain.
Too well our tears this mournful truth express,
And in a queen's a parent's loss confess;
A loss the general grief can best rehearse,
A theme superior to the pow'r of verse:
Though just our grief, be every murmur still,
Nor dare pronounce His dispensations ill,
In whose wise counsels and disposing hand
The fates of monarchies and monarchs stand:
Who only knows the state of either fit,
And bids the erring sense of man submit.

Ye grateful Britons, to her memory just,..
With pious tears embalm her sacred dust;
Confess her grac'd with all that's good and great,
A public blessing to a favour'd state:

Patron of freedom and her country's laws,
Sure friend to virtue's and religion's cause,
Religion's cause, whose charms superior shone
To every gay temptation of a crown.
Whose awful dictates all her soul possess'd,
Her one great aim to make a people bless'd!
"Ye drooping Muses, mourn her hasty doom,
And spread your deathless honours round her tomb:
Her name to long succeeding ages raise,
Who both inspir'd and patroniz'd you lays.
Each generous Art sit pensive o'er her urn,
And every Grace and every Virtue mourn.
Attending angels bear your sacred prize
Amidst the radiant glories of the skies;
Where godlike princes who below pursu'd
That noblest end of rule- the public good,
Now sit secure, their generous labour past,
With all the just rewards of virtue grac'd :*

1

In that bright train distinguish'd let her move,
Who built her empire on a people's love." 3]

3 Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, vol. i. p. 354. Churchill has hitched lord Melcombe into a sarcastic verse; not without moral cause, it is said, in his poem of Independence. The following → festal lines, however, written by his lordship, and placed under a bust of Comus in his hall, give little sanction to the charge of immorality, though of a bacchanalian cast:

While rosy wreaths the goblet deck,
Thus Comus spake, or seem'd to speak:
"This place for social hours design'd,
May care and business never find,
Come every muse, without restraint,
Let genius prompt, and fancy paint :
Let mirth and wit, with friendly strife,
'Chase the dull gloom that saddens life:
True wit, that, firm to virtue's cause,
Respects religion and the laws;
True mirth, that cheerfulness supplies
To modest ears and decent eyes.
Let these indulge their liveliest sallies,
But scorn the canker'd help of malice;
True to their country and their friend,
Both scorn to flatter or offend!"

JOHN BOYLE,

EARL OF CORK,

AND

ORRERY.

No family perhaps ever produced in so short a time so many distinguished persons as the house of Boyle. The great earl of Corke; the lord Broghill; that excellent philosopher and man, Mr. Boyle; the lord Carleton; Charles, earl of Orrery; lord viscount Shannon, the general; the earl of Shannon, so long speaker of the house of commons in Ireland; and the restorer of taste in architecture, the late earl of Burlington, were not the only ornaments of the same illustrious line.

The late earl of Corke, though not the brightest of his race, was ambitious of not degenerating; and united to the virtues of his family, their love of literature and science. It was a valuable present his lordship made to the world in writing

"The Life of Doctor Swift."