strange in one who had risen by his own unaided effort, affords room only for contempt or pity. Writing of the Earl of Chesterfield, he says: "Having often had the honour to be the butt of his raillery, I must own I have received more pleasure from his lively manner of raising the laugh against me, than I could have felt from the smoothest flattery of a serious civility." English literature presents few instances of such abject toadyism. Still he had talents, and let them receive their tribute of admiration; he did a service to his generation, and let him have his meed of praise. He was a patient reformer of inveterate abuses. By his writings he elevated the morality of the stage, and by his policy he improved its management.
His private life stands in unfavourable contrast with his public career. Witty and unprincipled, clever and vain, he lived only to amuse and be amused; a genuine comic actor, with no depth of feeling or strength of character; undepressed by misfortune, but elated with success; fond of his bottle, fond of his jest, fond likewise of the rattle of the dice.
Though undeserving the excessive depreciation he has suffered, a candid impartiality will refuse to connect any flattering encomium with his name. Whatever the debt contemporaries may owe, they who make it their chief business to cater to the public amusement merely, have little claim upon a succeeding generation; and his works having answered their purpose, will be solely valuable to the literary or historical student, as indicative of the taste of a period he neither disgraced nor adorned.
In height he was of the middle size, with a fair complexion, and a carriage easy, though not graceful. His voice was shrill, painfully so when he raised it to an unusual pitch; but his attitudes were strikingly expres-
