Of Lord Cowper's legal and judicial character and qualifications we have already spoken. With regard to his merits and failings as an individual, the virtues of integrity and kindheartedness appear to have been denied him by none; but of the strictness of his morality, or the depth of his religious impressions, there is less reason to entertain a very favourable opinion. He was a generous patron of literature and the fine arts: a handsome collection of pictures, formed by his taste, still adorns the seat of his noble descendants in Hertfordshire. But of his scholastic acquirements, independently of the learning of his profession, Swift did not perhaps give a very unjust report, when he designated him "a piece of a scholar." One of the most amusing anecdotists of those times (Dr. King) indeed affirms, that for a century and a half this country had boasted but two Chancellors who could be called really learned men-meaning, we presume, Bacon and Somers; and informs us that Lord Hardwicke even learned Latin after he arrived at the woolsack-which however we take to be a slight exaggeration. Nor were Lord Cowper's powers of intellect, perhaps, of the highest order, or his grasp of mind to be at all compared with that of a Mansfield or a Thurlow. But whatever were his merits or defects in other points, in one capacity—as a consummate master of the external part at least of the art of oratory, he had scarcely a rival in his own time, and has had probably few superiors since. The elegance of his diction, the charm of his elocution, the graces of his manner, set off as they were by the advantages of an animated and pleasing countenance, and handsome person, atoned for the want of strength, and not unfrequently perhaps cast a veil over the scantiness of argument. Of the first, the mutilated remains in the Parliamentary History present us with a faint resemblance; of the latter we can know nothing but by the reports of his contemporaries. By them they were all loudly celebrated. The panegyric pronounced by Ben Jonson upon Bacon was applied to him-that "he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power; and the fear of every man that heard him was lest he should come to an end." "The Lord Chancellor Cowper's strength as an orator," says Chesterfield, "lay by no means in his reasonings, for he often hazarded very weak ones. But such was the purity and elegancy of his style, such the propriety and charms of his elocution, and such the gracefulness of his action, that he never spoke without universal applause; the ears and the eyes gave him up the hearts and the understandings of the audience." The Duke of Wharton's rhapsodical encomiums we have already quoted. The poets also took up the praises of his eloquence. Pope, when in imitation of Horace's "Frater erat Romæ consulti rhetor," &c. he introduces his two brother serjeants bandying compliments, makes Cowper their model of a graceful speaker: ""Twas 'Sir, your wit'-and 'Sir, your eloquence '— 'Yours, Cowper's manner '—and 'yours, Talbot's sense."" Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, (or rather the uncertain In ancient times, on Tully's tongue; Ambrose Philips soars a higher flight ;— "Hear him speaking, and you hear Music tuneful to the ear; Lips with thymy language sweet, The balm of wisdom, speech refined, These testimonies-others might be added-sufficiently attest the estimation in which he was held as an accomplished orator. The few specimens that remain of his written style, although pure and harmonious, certainly would not of themselves have prepared us to expect such high commendation. A few of his familiar letters are preserved in the correspondence of Hughes the poet-they are easy and agreeable, and strongly display the writer in the light of an amiable and kind-hearted friend, but can make little or no pretension to merit as compositions. As a public man, Lord Cowper's character may fairly claim the praise of an honourable and independent consistency, superior to the temptations of power and gain, although falling short undoubtedly of that higher principle of public conduct which soars above the connexions and views of party -a principle admirable in theory, but the most difficult in the world to maintain stedfastly in practice; and the more so because its own good purposes are unattainable from the want of that strength of union which party only can exert. Cowper was, in truth, from first to last "a staunch Whig :" condescending to no mean compliances to secure his own personal aggrandizement, but not equally above engaging in the tracasseries of political strategics, for the advancement of the party whose general principles and policy he no doubt conscientiously believed the most conducive to the welfare of his country. After the lapse of a century, it is in vain to seek for details of the private life even of an individual of the most eminent public station and character, unless they have been treasured up by some gossiping kinsman or intimate, or preserved in the form of autobiography, or at least in familiar correspondence. Of Lord Cowper's we know almost nothing. He is represented to us as a lively and agreeable companion—a bon vivant, until the failure of his health compelled him to abstinence-goodnatured, generous, and hospitable: but of the scenes or circumstances in which these qualities were called into exercise, little or nothing can be traced. Although he kept a diary for some years, it records little besides political matters:-it still remains in manuscript only, in the collection of the Earl of Hardwicke. By his long and profitable career at the bar, and his various official emoluments, he realized, in addition to his patrimonial estate, an ample fortune, out of which he purchased the manor of Hertingfordbury, and built upon it, at a spot called Colne Green, a handsome house, which was pulled down in 1801, when the present more stately mansion of Pansanger was erected. At Colne Green were to be seen (when Dr. Kippis's collaborateur in the publication of the Biographia, worthy Dr. Towers, went down to collect information about the family in 1789) the purses which had contained the seals during the several years of Lord Cowper's chancellorship, which however were too few to be applied to the thrifty purpose to which good Lady Hardwicke devoted her lord's-the hanging of the state apartment. Among the pictures, there were three different portraits of the Chancellor by Kneller, which no doubt are still preserved at Pansanger. Lord Cowper was twice (avowedly) married; first, to Judith, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Booth, of London, who died in April 1705, and by whom he had one child only, a son, who scarcely attained boyhood: secondly, to Mary, daughter of John Clavering, Esq., of Chopwell, in the county of Durham, who survived him a few months. By her he had two sons and two daughters; the former were William, his successor in the title, and Spencer, who entered the church and became Dean of Durham. The Chancellor's younger brother, Spencer, was not prevented by the heavy charge alleged against him in early life, from attaining rank and repute both in his profession and in parliament. On his brother's elevation to the woolsack, he succeeded him in the representation of Beeralston, and sat afterwards for Truro; adhered with equal inflexibility to the Whig party, was a frequent and successful speaker, and one of the managers in the impeachments of Sacheverell, and of the rebel lords in 1716. On the accession of George I., he was appointed Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales; in 1717, Chief Justice of Chester; and in 1727, a Judge of the Common Pleas, retaining also, by the especial favour of the Crown, his former office until his death in December 1728. His second son, John, became the father of another William Cowper, of even greater celebrity than he whose career we have been recording-the poet of "The Task." 172 LORD HARCOURT. FEW names have adorned the English peerage, which could boast their descent from a nobler source or more remote antiquity than that of Harcourt. Connected in its course, by blood or alliance, with several of the most distinguished families of Britain, it claimed kindred also for centuries with one of the noblest houses that graced the proud aristocracy of France during the middle ages. When Rollo the Norman, at the close of the ninth century, overran and wasted the province of which, by a formal cession from Charles the Simple, he became the tributary sovereign, and which thenceforth received the name of Normandy, his second in command, Bernard, a Danish chief of the blood royal of Saxony, was rewarded for his services in the expedition by a grant of several valuable fiefs, among which was that of Harcourt, within a few miles of the town of Falaise. He continued next the throne in trust and power during the reigns of Rollo and his son, and was nominated guardian of the infant successor of the latter, and regent of the duchy during his minority. Of his two grandsons, Touroude or Turulph, and Turchetil, who were also joint governers and guardians of their infant sovereign, the elder had a numerous issue, and according to some genealogists was the progenitor of all the Scottish Hamiltons; the younger was also the father of a son, Anchitel, who, on the general introduction of surnames among the Norman nobles, first assumed that of Harcourt. His two eldest sons attended William the Norman in his descent on England; and from the second of them, Robert de Harcourt, descended in a direct line, without a single |