encomium, it were easy to enlarge on
so copious a subject; but, confining myself to the severity of truth,
and to what is becoming me to say, I must not only pass over many
instances of your military skill, but also those of your assiduous
diligence in the war, and of your personal bravery, attended with an
ardent thirst of honour--a long train of generosity--profuseness of
doing good--a soul unsatisfied with all it has done and an
unextinguished desire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own
historians; I am, as Virgil says, _Spatiis exclusus iniquis_.

Yet not to be wholly silent of all your charities, I must stay a little
on one action, which preferred the relief of others to the consideration
of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a
fault only pardonable to your youth) had transported you so far before
your friends, that they were unable to follow, much less to succour you;
when you were not only dangerously, but in all appearance mortally
wounded; when in that desperate condition you were made prisoner and
carried to Namur, at that time in possession of the French: then it was,
my Lord, that you took a considerable part of what was remitted to you
of your own revenues, and, as a memorable instance of your heroic
charity, put it into the bands of Count Guiscard, who was governor of
the place, to be distributed among your fellow-prisoners. The French
commander, charmed with the greatness of your soul, accordingly
consigned it to the use for which it was intended by the donor; by which
means the lives of so many miserable men were saved, and a comfortable
provision made for their subsistence, who had otherwise perished, had
not you been the companion of their misfortune; or rather sent by
Providence, like another Joseph, to keep out famine from invading those
whom in humility you called your brethren. How happy was it for those
poor creatures that your Grace was made their fellow-sufferer! and how
glorious for you that you chose to want rather than not relieve the
wants of others! The heathen poet, in commending the charity of Dido to
the Trojans, spoke like a Christian: _Non ignara mali, miseris
succurrere disco_. All men, even those of a different interest, and
contrary principles, must praise this action as the most eminent for
piety, not only in this degenerate age, but almost in any of the former;
when men were made _de meliore luto_; when examples of charity were
frequent, a