Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/14

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HE celebrated authoreſs of the Atalantis, was born in Hampſhire, in one of thoſe iſlands which formerly belonged to France, of which her father Sir Roger Manley was governor; who afterwards enjoyed the ſame poſt in other places in England. He was the ſecond ſon of an ancient family; the better part of his eſtate was ruined in the civil war by his firm adherence to Charles I. He had not the ſatisfaction of ever being taken notice of, nor was his loyalty acknowledged at the reſtoration. The governor was a brave gallant man, of great honour and integrity.

He became a ſcholar in the midſt of the camp, having left the univerſity at the age of ſixteen, to follow the fortunes of Charles I. His temper had too much of the Stoic in it to attend much to the intereſt of his family: After a life ſpent in the civil and foreign wars, he began to love eaſe and retirement, devoting himſelf to his ſtudy, and the charge of his little poſt, without following the court; his great virtue and modeſty, debaring him from ſolliciting favours from ſuch perſons as were then at the helm of affairs, his deſerts were buried, and forgotten. In this ſolitude he wrote ſeveral trails for his own amuſement, particularly his Latin Commentaries of the Civil Wars of England. He was likewiſe author of the firſt volume of that admired work, the Turkiſh Spy. One Dr. Midgley, an ingenious phyſician, related to the family by marriage, had the charge of looking over his papers. Amongſt them he found that