the stern records of history-the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey. Her story is so trite and familiar, even to our childish days, that it may appear trifling to mention it; but who does not dwell upon and read over and over again her pathetic tale, with a still renewed and melancholy pleasure? A young and innocent creature, dragged, against the convictions of her conscience and her better judgment, from the life of harmless privacy and literary taste which she had chosen for herself; made the puppet of designing and ambitious traitors, who ought to have been her natural shield and protection from the rude assaults of a tumultuous world; suddenly elevated to a pinnacle of giddy elevation, only to be precipitated, within the space of ten days, with a more sudden downfall; bearing her ruin with equanimity; calmly maintaining her religious tenets, and meekly giving a reason of the hope on which was built her title to immortality, to those sent to undermine the only blessing they could not deprive her of; bowing in resignation to her own fate, and striving to inspire with like heavenly confidence her associates in death; there is something in all this, so very sad, so undeserved, so dignified, that, among the many dismal annals of our country, there are few pages calculated to excite a deeper interest, than that which contains the story of Jane Grey.

I now beg my readers to accompany me to a society calculated to impress feelings of a very different kind. In the epistolary correspondence of Pope and his friends, we are introduced to men of unrivalled genius and wit. It presents to us a curious chapter in human nature, of which vanity and self-complacency form a conspicuous feature. There is much that we must smile at, more that we must blame; but I am induced to advert to it, on the present occasion, from the love of books, and predominant passion for study, which stands out so prominently, and appears to have possessed them all. That those, who were professedly authors, should be addicted to such pursuits, of course was to be ex

pected; but we find others of the party who were immersed in the affairs of state, or the duties of their profession, still cultivating the same taste, and reaping from it a pleasure which they acknowledged that ambition failed to produce. "If am good for anything," says the Bishop of Rochester, "'tis 'in angulo cum libello'; and yet a good part of my time has been spent, and, perhaps, must be spent far otherwise. For I will never, while I have health, be wanting to my duty in any post, or in any respect." The same passion still continued, and cheered his well-known exile. We find him, some years afterwards, writing to Pope-"How many books have come out of late in your parts, which you think I should be glad to peruse? Name them: the catalogue, I believe, will not cost you much trouble. They must be good ones, indeed, to challenge any part of my time, now I have so little of it left. I, who have squandered whole days heretofore, now husband hours when the glass begins to run low, and care not to spend them on trifles. At the end of the lottery of life, our last minutes, like tickets in the wheel, rise in their valuation. They are not of so much worth, perhaps, in themselves as those which preceded, but we are apt to prize them more, and with reason." I have transcribed this sentence on account of the beauty of the expression, but cannot help regretting, that the Bishop had not directed his studies in another channel. With this, however, the argument of my paper is not concerned. It is but justice, however, to Atterbury to add, that he did not wholly rest on literature for the support of his declining years in proof of this, we can refer to his letter to Pope on the death of his daughter. In his intercourse, too, with Pope, before his banishment, to which we have the beautiful allusion

"How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour!

How shin'd the soul, unconquer'd in the Tow'r!"

we observe that he was not occupied solely in questions of

learning and taste, but evinced his anxiety for the poet's welfare, in advising him to study the Popish controversy, in the hope of his conversion; and when they met for the last time in the Tower, Atterbury showed the thoughts that were uppermost in his mind, by presenting the poet with a Bible. We may be sure that in their hours of familiar communication, many other traits of this kind must have passed between them, to which, probably, Pope may allude in gratitude, when he says-“ Perhaps it is not only in this world that I may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester."

I shall make brief mention of another of this remarkable knot, who seems to have exercised a malign influence over his companions, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke

"My guide, philosopher, and friend," sings Pope. Poor Pope, what a selection to make of a guide and a friend! We might have been disposed to put these down as mere rhetorical flourishes and poetic licences, had not the last acts of the poet's life proved the unabated sincerity of his admiration for his noble friend, who returned the friendship in a manner—but who does not remember? It was worthy of such a school of philosophy!

Political intrigue and the toils of office did not afford sufficient employment, for the restless mind of the aspiring and ambitious Bolingbroke. His desire, too, was to shine as a metaphysician and philosopher, and a precious legacy he has bequeathed to the world, in writings which have been well characterised, as "wild and pernicious ravings under the name of philosophy." The posthumous publication of them by Mallett roused the indignation of Johnson, who uttered upon the occasion the far-famed invective :-" Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not the resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the

:

trigger after his death." This mischievous publication gave rise at the time to another beautiful literary anecdote. It happened that, on the very day it was ushered into the world, England mourned the death of one of her best and most favourite ministers, Mr. Pelham. This coincidence I was surprised, I confess, to find seized upon, and turned to admirable use, by one from whom I would not have expected it—Garrick, in his "Ode on the death of Mr. Pelham." In this elegant little poem, which well deserves to be better known, are the following verses, referring to Lord Bolingbroke:—

"Has some peculiar strange offence,
Against us arm'd Omnipotence,
To check the nation's pride?
Behold the appointed punishment!
At length the 'vengeful bolt is sent:
It fell, when Pelham died!

"Uncheck'd by shame, unaw'd by dread,
When vice triumphant rears her head
Vengeance can sleep no more:
The evil angel stalks at large,
The good submits, resigns his charge,
And quits the unhallow'd shore.

"The same sad morn to Church and State
(So for our sins 'twas fix'd by fate),
A double stroke was giv'n:
Black as the whirlwind of the north,
St. John's fell genius issu'd forth,
And Pelham fled to heav'n!

"By angels watch'd in Eden's bowers,
Our parents pass'd their peaceful hours,
Nor guilt nor pain they knew:
But on the day which usher'd in,
The hell-born train of mortal sin,
The heav'nly guards withdrew."

All the friends of decency and virtue were outraged by this vile publication, and they could not but remember the plausible hypocrisy of the man, who dilated upon the beauties of virtue, whilst he was enslaved in

his own person to vicious pleasure, and "reflected" upon the advantages of "exile," while he was leaving no means untried to secure his recall to his native country. "In such a retreat you may sit down" (he says in his declamatory and verbose style, in a little work which has procured for him the title of the "Stoical Fop"), "like one of the inhabitants of Elis, who judged of the Olympic games, without taking any part in them. Far from the hurry of the world, and almost an unconcerned spectator of what passes in it, having paid in a public life what you owed to the present age, pay in a private life what you owe to posterity. Write, as you live, without passion: and build your reputation, as you build your happiness, on the foundations of truth. If you want the talents, the inclination, or the necessary materials for such a work, fall not, however, into sloth. Endeavour to copy after the example of Scipio at Luternum. Be able to say to yourself—

"Innocuas amo delicias, doctamque quietem.'

Rural amusements and philosophical meditations will make your hours glide smoothly on."

This noble writer little thought, in his day-dreams and metaphysical reveries, of the castigation that was reserved for him, among the posterity which he valued so highly, from one whom he held but in slight estimation at the time, Warburton, the friend of his friend, and the defender and avenger of that friend, and who rises in the judgment of mankind above the philosophical Lord, as much as

"The falcon, tow'ring in his pride of place,"

does over the "mousing owl." Bolingbroke conferred a benefit on the world which he little intended, in being the cause of "A View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, by Dr. Warburton." Infidelity in England shrunk abashed and cowering under the lashes of this inimi