much applauded by some of our first peers. We had an unlucky business about two days ago, that befell the Muscovite ambassador, who was arrested going out of his house, and rudely treated by the bailiffs. He was then upon his departure for his own country, and the sum under a hundred pounds that stays him: and what makes the business the worse, he has been punctual in his payments, and had given orders that this very sum should be paid the day after. However, as he is very well convinced that the government entirely disapproves such a proceeding, there are no ill consequences apprehended from it. Your lordship knows that the privileges of ambassadors are under very little regulations in England, and I believe that a bill will be promoted in the next parliament for setting them upon a certain foot; at least, it is what we talk of in both offices on this occasion.

I am, my Lord, your &c.

The Russian ambassador, still more severe in his requisitions than the Earl of Manchester, demanded as reparation on occasion of the indignity offered him, the lives of the bailiffs by whom his privileges had been so rudely violated; but English lives not being at their prince's disposal, he was obliged to content himself with such apologies and reparations as could be made. Another letter to Wortley Montagu, is a pleasing proof that this early friendship flourished still amid the anxieties of public business and the distractions of London life.

MR. ADDISON TO MR. WORTLEY MONTAGU.

Dear Sir-I am infinitely obliged to you for your kind letter, but am afraid that the present posture of affairs in our office will not let me have the happiness I proposed to myself of passing part of the summer in your company. My brother Hopkins is aiming at the House of Commons, and therefore desired me to take out my month in the country as soon as I can, that he may be at leisure to push his interest there in its season.

At the same time I am very much disposed to go to the Bath, where I hope to put myself in good humor for the rest of the year, and gain as much benefit by the waters as a friend of mine did about a twelvemonth ago. I wish your inclination would determine you to the same place, or that going thither or coming back, I might have the honor of waiting on you; for I hope you don't think it a compliment when I assure you that I value your conversation more than any man's living, and'am, with the great

est truth and esteem, sir, your most affectionate friend and most obedient servant.

Whitehall, May 1, 1708.

I think of setting out next week with Col. Frowde, in a coach that we shall hire for ourselves, to the Bath.

To the same friend he soon after communicates the state of the war as follows:

August 17, 1708.

Dear Sir-The last time I had the honor to see you, I was in so much haste that I could not tell you I had been talking of you tête-à-tête to my Lord Halifax that day, who expressed himself with a great deal of friendship and esteem. I have not yet made the grand experiments. We think here as you do in the country, that France is on her last legs. By a mail just now arrived, we hear that the Duke of Marlborough had made a movement to prevent the junction of the two armies under the Dukes of Vendome and Berwick. They give out that they will resign all rather than lose little; and they of the army are of opinion that we are at the point of a general action, which our friends are very eager upon. There has been an action between the Marshal de Villars and the Duke of Savoy, which the French tell to their advantage; but as soon as our letters come from Switzerland, we hope to have a better account of it: for the French letters own that, immediately after their pretended success, the Duke of Savoy took Exilles. I am, dear sir, your &c.

CHAPTER VIII.

1708-1709.

Earl of Sunderland dismissed. Addison loses the Vice-secretaryship in consequence. Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, appoints him his chief Secretary. Account and character of Earl Wharton. His policy and conduct in Ireland. Letter of Swift respecting Addison. Of Steele. Addison chosen a member of Parliament for Malmsbury. Unable to speak in the House. Takes Budgell to Ireland. His official conduct. State of Parties.

THE Earl of Sunderland was not suffered long to retain his hard-won secretaryship; in the last month of 1708 he was dis

*

missed to make room for Lord Dartmouth, who ranked with the Tories. By this revolution his under-secretary would likewise have found himself thrown back upon private life and his own resources, had not a fresh patron stood forth, by whom he was preferred to an office similar in its functions to that which he had lost, but of higher trust, and probably superior emolument. Just at this time, the Earl of Wharton, being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, named Mr. Addison his chief secretary. His acceptance of so confidential a post under such a principal, having been supposed by Dr. Johnson to require an apology, it will not be improper here to enter at some length into the history and character of this nobleman, certainly one of the most remarkable men of his time.

He was the son of Philip baron Warton, whose name often occurs in connection with the great struggle of the reign of Charles I. By this king, when on his march against the Scots in 1640, he had been committed to custody at York, and even threatened with death as a sower of sedition, for presenting to his majesty petitions for the calling of a Parliament; but was speedily liberated for fear of a mutiny of the army. In the civil war he commanded a regiment for the parliament; but, like the greater part of the Presbyterians, among whom he was a principal leader, he protested against those steps which led directly to the trial and death of the king, and retired from public life for some time after that event. Subsequently, however, he had accepted of a seat in Cromwell's council, and in his Upper House, on which account he was in danger of being excluded from the act of indemnity passed at the Restoration. The arbitrary measures of Charles II. found in him a steady and courageous opponent; in 1677 he was committed to the Tower for declaring against the legality of a Parliament which had been continued from the beginning of the reign without a fresh appeal to the people. His intimacy with Algernon Sidney afterwards brought him into so much suspicion concerning plots, or pretended plots, that on the accession of James II., he judged it for his safety to obtain a license to travel; but he was one of the first noblemen in readiness to greet the Prince of Orange on his arrival in London. To the end of his days, defying pains and penalties, he entertained a Presbyterian minister in his house as chaplain. This nobleman, sometimes called the good Lord Wharton, died very aged in 1694.

* "Sunderland was not dismissed to make room for Dartmouth, till June 1710."-Macaulay.

Thomas, his son and heir, Earl and afterwards Marquis Wharton, was born in 1647, and early sent by his father to travel, under the care of a learned tutor of his own sentiments in religion and politics. The love of civil liberty thus inculcated upon him remained with the young nobleman throughout his career; and in after life, notwithstanding his public conformity and professed conversion to the Established Church, notwithstanding even the character of an open scoffer at all religion which was often cast upon him, he was never able to clear himself from the reproach of sectarianism. In fact, however, he soon manifested "an aversion to the severities of a puritanical life," and "began to indulge himself in all the pleasures of mirth and gallantry." Nor did riper age teach him more control over his propensities; friend and foe are agreed that his private morals always continued worthy of a courtier of Charles II. But a life of pleasure only, could not long suffice a genius so bright, so active, so fearless and so aspiring. He threw himself into politics, became knight of the shire for Buckingham, was one of those bold men who presented the Duke of York to the grand jury of Middlesex as a popish recusant; and he voted for the Exclusion Bill. When the rash and culpable rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth broke out, Wharton's known intimacy with him justified a warrant to search his country seat for arms. He held a secret correspondence with the Prince of Orange, and was one of that small number of trusty adherents to whom the plan of his intended expedition was privately communicated. On the prince's landing he was the first mar of consequence who joined him, hastening down to Exeter to meet him with twenty friends, and the store of arms which had not been found in the search of his house. He sat too in the Convention-parliament.

Such eminent services were duly rewarded under the new reign by the place of comptroller of the household, the lieutenancy of the counties of Oxford, Westmoreland and Bucks, and other honors. The post of secretary of state to which he aspired was refused him, on account, it is said, of some offence taken by the king at his violence of temper, and his hostility to Robert, Earl of Sunderland, a wily statesman who had rendered himself necessary to a long series of adininistrations by his abilities and extraordinary dexterity, though trusted by none. Wharton, if less skilled to render himself indispensable in the government, was largely endowed with every qualification which could render him formidable when left out of it. He was a great public speaker; somewhat coarse, it should seem, in his style, since Bolingbroke

called him the scavenger of his party, but bold, fluent, ready, full of wit, and merciless in sarcasm and invective; artful at the same time, and dextrous in swaying the passions of a popular assembly; better adapted therefore to the Lower House than the Upper; but terrible to his adversaries in both. Added to this, he was quite unrivaled in all the arts of canvassing and electioneering, and certainly the greatest borough-monger of his time. At one important juncture he is said to have returned thirty members. His biographer affirms that he devoted no less a sum than eighty thousand pounds to the maintenance of his parliamentary interest.

Not content with these distinctions, he was the first man on the turf, paid great attention to his stud, and cultivated a matchless breed of grayhounds. In architecture and gardening he was so skilled as to be consulted by all his friends, and his seat of Winchendon in Wilts, on which he laid out vast sums, was a model of taste and magnificence. He had a peculiar way," says his biographer," of engaging men in his friendship and sentiments. When any young lords or gentlemen appeared first in the world, he took care to fall in with their passions, and diverting them in their way, never failed of gaining them over to his party when he set about it. If they delighted in hunting, he assisted them in their sports with his horses and hounds; if in racers, he mended their breed for them; if in play, he had those about him who fitted them, though himself did not much affect it; if in mirth, himself was the gayest company upon earth; if in a bottle, they were humored in that, though he hated excess in it. He was not only good to others for his own ends but for theirs too, and served his friends upon all occasions with a readiness and industry which seldom failed of success.

On the accession of Anne, Lord Wharton, with others of the Whigs, was dismissed from his offices, and the queen even went so far as to strike out his name from the list of privy councilors with her own hand. But he was not thus to be put down. By an able application of his various resources, and especially by a well-timed alliance with Godolphin, he speedily regained such a footing in the court as enabled him to extort from her Majesty, not merely his restoration to the rank of a privy councilor, but by way of amends, a favorite object of his ambition, advancement to an earldom. Still striving onwards, he had now battled his way into the great office of lord lieutenant of Ireland.

At the commencement of Lord Wharton's administration, the same arrogant and selfish faction which had delighted in trampling upon the rights and the feelings of the Protestant dissenters of