prescriptive right to a place in all collections of the works of English
poets. To this day accordingly his insipid essays in rhyme and his
paltry songs to Amoretta and Gloriana are reprinted in company with
Comus and Alexander's Feast. The consequence is that our generation
knows Mulgrave chiefly as a poetaster, and despises him as such. In
truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither
loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in
parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His
moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without
that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism
amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment
which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The
satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride. Yet was his pride
compatible with all ignoble vices. Many wondered that a man who had so
exalted a sense of his dignity could be so hard and niggardly in all
pecuniary dealings. He had given deep offence to the royal family by
venturing to entertain the hope that he might win the heart and hand of
the Princess Anne. Disappointed in this attempt, he had exerted himself
to regain by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption.
His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through
Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we
learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects
of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon as James was
on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at
length in private affected to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had
been rewarded by a place in the Ecclesiastical Commission. [285]

Before that formidable tribunal now appeared the Vicechancellor of the
University of Cambridge, Doctor John Pechell. He was a man of no
great ability or vigour, but he was accompanied by eight distinguished
academicians, elected by the Senate. One of these was Isaac Newton,
Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of mathematics. His genius was
then in the fullest vigour. The great work, which entitles him to the
highest place among the geometricians and natural philosophers of all
ages and of all nations, had been some time printing under the sanction
of the Royal Society, and was almost ready for publication. He was the
steady friend of civil libe