Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/353

Rh France he went to Paris, where he met Boileau and La Fontaine, astonishing the former by his account of English poetry and English drama. The conversation, as described by Oldmixon, closely resembles that between Addison and Boileau a few years later. Shortly after his return he was made a member of the Kit-Cat Club, and received through Montague a commissionership of customs. He gained a speedy ascendency over the board, and a reputation, even among enemies, for honesty and high principle. Oldmixon tells a pleasant story of the discomfiture of a candidate who some days preceding the election to a vacant post left fifty sovereigns at Maynwaring's lodgings with a letter soliciting his support in exchange. In 1705 Godolphin rewarded his services to the whigs by appointing him auditor of imprests, with an income of 3,000l. a year. Oldmixon seems to refer this appointment to an earlier year, but the first report bearing Maynwaring's signature is dated 19 Oct. 1705 (Cal. of State Papers, Treasury Ser. 1702–7, p. 377). His intimacy with the actress Mrs. Oldfield, the grande passion of his life, began some time previously. He wrote a number of prologues for her, but his influence on her style is less certain. On 27 Dec. 1706 he was elected member for the borough of Preston, and continued to represent it until 1710 (Members of Parliament, pt. i. p. 602, pt. ii. pp. 3, 11). He was M.P. for West Looe from 1710 till his death. In the crisis of 1709–1710 Maynwaring was a fiery advocate of the prosecution of Sacheverell, and after the dissolution attacked him and his supporters in a merciless fashion in the ‘Letters to a Friend in North Britain,’ the most significant of his writings apart from the ‘Medley.’ ‘Hannibal and Hanno,’ a striking defence of Marlborough, belongs to the same period. The exact part taken by Maynwaring in the ‘Whig Examiner,’ the first number of which appeared on 14 Sept. 1710, five weeks after its great rival, is not clearly known. The third number, ‘Alcibiades to the Athenians,’ is certainly his. Dissatisfied with the name ‘Examiner,’ however, and with the conduct of the paper, he had an interview with Oldmixon about the end of September, laid before him the plan of the ‘Medley,’ and on 5 Oct. the first number was issued. During the ten months that it lasted the ‘Medley’ was almost entirely Maynwaring's own work, pursuing the ‘Examiner’ with a close and vehement criticism that at last provoked Harley to try to gag it, but the attorney-general refused to move. (For particulars of Maynwaring's articles in the ‘Medley,’ see, Life, pp. 169–202.) With 1711 the tory position seemed secure; on 26 July the ‘Examiner’ was dropped, and in the following week the last ‘Medley’ was printed. ‘Grub Street is dead,’ Swift wrote jubilantly to Stella a few days later. Maynwaring's health had now given way, consumption declared itself, and his mode of life, which it was too late to change, fed the disease, but he worked on incessantly, inflamed to new effort by Louis's overtures of peace. He published a vigorous arraignment of the French policy towards the close of the year; in 1712 he was engaged on a history of the march to Blenheim, based on a diary kept by the duke's chaplain. A fragment is printed by Oldmixon. He went through his duties as auditor in person to the very end. His last report is signed 4 Nov.; ten days later he died. With Maynwaring's winning manner, he had a certain proud reserve, which when armed with a bitter wit kept the familiarity, to which his peculiar position exposed him, in check, but made his company a restraint rather than pleasure to men intellectually inferior to himself. Over Oldmixon and the like his sway was absolute. He gave a willing hand to struggling or disappointed men. Steele maintained that he owed his post as gazetteer to Maynwaring, to whom he dedicated the first volume of the ‘Tatler;’ and Maynwaring was certainly one of the first to discern the abilities of Walpole. He was a good hater, and never concealed a cause for it in an opponent; if he had written the attack upon Smalridge in the second ‘Medley,’ there would have been no dispute about the authorship. He cared nothing for money, and in spite of his large income died comparatively poor. He had appointed Mrs. Oldfield his executrix, and divided his property equally between her and his sister, the former employing her share upon the education of their son, Arthur Maynwaring. Three months after his death, 9 Feb. 1712–13, the ‘Examiner’ published some cowardly reflections upon his private character, to which Walpole replied.

[Maynwaring's name frequently occurs in contemporary writings, but the chief authority is Oldmixon's Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Maynwaring, 1712. He is often vague, sometimes mistaken, but leaves a vivid impression of Maynwaring's character and influence. See also Finley's A Short History of the Maynwaring Family; Swift's Works, 1824, iv. 191–193, vi. 168, xv. 349; Anonymous Memoirs of Mrs. Oldfield, 1730, pp. 24–7. Egerton, in his Life of Mrs. Oldfield, merely gives extracts from Oldmixon, but prints Maynwaring's will; Oldmixon's Memoirs of the Press, 1742, pp. 6–14, 20–2; Tatler, the first number of which is dedicated to Maynwaring, Nos. 187, 190; Poems on Affairs of State, 1704, iii. 319–23. For refer-