Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/271

Rh place of history, and would read with satisfaction a performance in which the courage and miltary kill of the Duke of Marl- borough is called in question. The real character of these great men was not what the low idolatry of the one faction, or the malignity of the other, would represent it. They were men who, with great virtus and great talents, mixt with some human infirmities, ail their country much service and honour. Their talents were a public benefit; their failings such as only affected their private character. The display of this mixture had been a very proper task for an impartial historian; and had proved equally agreeable and instructive to the reader in such hands. But these characters before us, have all the signs of being written, as Tacitus calls it, recentibus odiis. In all other respects the piece seems to be a work not unworthy of its author; a clear and strong, though not an elevated style; an entire freedom from every fort of affected ornament; a peculiar happiness of putting those he would ize in the most odious and contemptible light, without seeming directly to intend it.

These are the characteristics of all Swift's works, and they appear as strongly in this as in any of them. If there be any thing different in this performance, from the manner of his works published in his life time, it is that the stile is in this thrown something more backwards, and has a more antique cast. This probably he did designedly, as he might think it gave a greater dignity to the work. He had a strorg prejudice in favour of the language as it was in Queen Elizabeth's reign; and he rated the style of the authors of that time a little above its real value. Their style was indeed sufficiently bold and nervous, but deficient in grace and elegance.

HE Lord Somers may very deservedly be reputed the head and oracle of that party; he hath raised himself by the concurrence of many circumstances, to the greatest employments of the state, without the least support from birth or fortune; he hath constantly, and with great steadiness, cultivated those principles under which he grew. The accident which first produced him into the world, of pleading for the bishops, whom King James had sent to the Tower, might have proved a piece of merit as honourable as it was fortunate; but the old republican spirit which the revolution had restored, began to teach other lessons; that since we had accepted a new king from a calvinistical commonwealth, we must also admit new maxims in religion and government: but since the nobility and gentry would probably adhere to the established church, and to the rights of monarchy as delivered down from their ancestors; it was the practice of those politicians to introduce such men as were perfectly indifferent to any or no religion, and who were not likely to inherit much loyalty from those to whom they owed their birth. Of this number was the person I am now describing. I have hardly known any man with talents more proper to acquire and preserve the favour of a prince, never of sending in werd or gesture, which