when Spence remonstrated that it must be a melancholy thing to be constantly with a person in so distressing a condition, "That is true," he said; "but if you consider how I should have been employed in nursing and attending a sick friend, that thought would have made it agreeable."* During his illness, Lady Peterborough is said to have attended him with unwearying kindness.

The chirurgical operation alluded to by Pope was the very painful one of being cut for the stone. He refused to be bound during the operation, and when the surgeon remonstrated with him on his obstinacy, "No, Sir," he said, “it shall never be reported that a Mordaunt was seen bound: do your best, Sir." He then desired to be placed in the position most favourable for using the knife, and underwent the agony without flinching. Three weeks afterwards, he was at his own seat at Bevis Mount.

It was about this period that, at the age of seventy-seven, he addressed the following singular letter to Lady Suffolk,—a lady whom he had formerly addressed in the language of a lover, and with whom he still corresponded as a friend :

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MADAM,-I return you your obliging inquiry after

* Spence's Anecdotes, p. 13.

"Bevis Mount,† July, 1735.

a thousand thanks for my health. I strug

+ The seat of Lord Peterborough, in Hampshire. Horace Walpole writes to Richard Bentley, Esq. on the 18th of Sep

gle on with doubtful success: one of my strongest motives to do so is, the hopes of seeing you at my cottage before I die, when you either go to Bath or to Mrs. Herbert's.

*

"In my most uneasy moments I find amusement in a book, which I therefore send you; it is one of the most interesting I ever read. I had gathered to myself some notions of the character from pieces of history written in both extremes, but I never expected so agreeable and so fair an account from a priest. In one quarter of an hour, we love and hate the same person without inconstancy. One moment, the Emperor is in possession of our whole heart, and the philosopher fully possessed of our soul; within four or five pages, we blush for our hero, and are ashamed of our philosopher.

"What courage, what presence of mind in

tember, 1735:-"Going in to Southampton, I passed Bevismount, where my Lord Peterborough

'Hung his trophies o'er his garden gate;'

but General Mordaunt was there, and we could not see it: we walked long by moonlight on the terrace along the beach."Walpole's Letters, v. iii, 149. Walpole's quotation, though somewhat mangled, is from a couplet of Pope, in which the poet was thought to allude to the entrance of Lord Peterborough's lawn at Bevismount :

"Our generals now, retired to their estate,

Hang their old trophies o'er the garden gate."

* Apparently, the Life of Julian the Apostate, by the Abbé de la Bléterie, published in 1735.

danger! the first and bravest man in a Roman army; sharing with every soldier the fatigue and danger! The same animal hunting after fortune-tellers, gazing upon the flight of birds, looking into the entrails of beasts with vain curiosity; seeking for cunning women (as we call them) and silly men to give him an account of his destiny, and, if it can be believed, consenting to the highest inhumanities in pursuit of magical experiments.

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Yet, when we come to the last scene, the most prejudiced heart must be softened. With what majesty does the emperor meet his fate! showing how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk's ought,-only with juster notions of the Deity, to die.

"The lady, the book, or both together, have brought me almost into a raving way: I want to make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few friends more, to meet upon the summit of my Bevis hill, and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds, as Julian expresses it, to mix amongst the stars; but I make my bargain for a very fine day, that you may see my last amusements to advantage.

"Wherever be the place, and whenever the time, I shall remain to the utmost possibility, &c. "PETERBOROUGH."

It was observed of Lord Peterborough by

* Suffolk Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 129.

Pope, that " he would neither live nor die like any other mortal." In his last illness he said, alluding to " Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time," which had recently been published,-“ I would willingly live to give that rascal the lie in half his history." The work in question he carried with him when he departed for Lisbon; having already illustrated it with several marginal notes, which, unfortunately, have never been permitted to see the light.

Lord Peterborough died on his passage to Portugal on the 25th day of October, 1735, in his seventy-eighth year. His remains were brought to England, and interred at the ancient seat of his family, Turvey, in Bedfordshire. He was succeeded in his titles by his grandson, Charles Mordaunt, in whose son, Charles Henry Mordaunt, fifth Earl of Peterborough, the earldoms of Peterborough and Mordaunt became extinct.

In person, Lord Peterborough was above the common height, but was so thin that Swift called him a skeleton. "He is a well-shaped thin man," says Macky, "with a very brisk look." The same writer adds:-" He affects popularity, and loves to preach in coffee-houses, and public places; is an open enemy to revealed religion; brave in his person; hath a good estate; does not seem expensive, yet always in debt, and very poor." There is extant a fine portrait of Lord Peterborough by Kneller.

The great Lord Peterborough, in addition to

VOL. II.

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MORDAUNT, EARL OF PETERBOROUGH.

other literary compositions, was the author of his own Memoirs, which his widow, unfortunately, suppressed. Literature must ever regret the loss of such a treasure. Lady Suffolk told Horace Walpole that Lord Peterborough had himself shown her as many as three volumes of his autobiography.