ssolution of the Ministry
unavoidable, Sir George Lyttelton, losing with the rest his employment,
was recompensed with a peerage; and rested from political turbulence in
the House of Lords.

His last literary production was his "History of Henry the Second,"
elaborated by the searches and deliberations of twenty years, and
published with such anxiety as only vanity can dictate. The story of
this publication is remarkable. The whole work was printed twice over,
a great part of it three times, and many sheets four or five times. The
booksellers paid for the first impression; but the changes and repeated
operations of the press were at the expense of the author, whose
ambitious accuracy is known to have cost him at least a thousand pounds.
He began to print in 1755. Three volumes appeared in 1764, a second
edition of them in 1767, a third edition in 1768, and the conclusion in
1771.

Andrew Reid, a man not without considerable abilities and not
unacquainted with letters or with life, undertook to persuade Lyttelton,
as he had persuaded himself, that he was master of the secret of
punctuation; and, as fear begets credulity, he was employed, I know not
at what price, to point the pages of "Henry the Second." The book was at
last pointed and printed, and sent into the world. Lyttelton took money
for his copy, of which, when he had paid the pointer, he probably
gave the rest away; for he was very liberal to the indigent. When
time brought the History to a third edition, Reid was either dead or
discarded; and the superintendence of typography and punctuation was
committed to a man originally a comb-maker, but then known by the style
of Doctor. Something uncommon was probably expected, and something
uncommon was at last done; for to the Doctor's edition is appended, what
the world had hardly seen before, a list of errors in nineteen pages.

But to politics and literature there must be an end. Lord Lyttelton had
never the appearance of a strong or of a healthy man; he had a slender,
uncompacted frame, and a meagre face; he lasted, however, sixty years,
and was then seized with his last illness. Of his death a very affecting
and instructive account has been given by his physician, which will
spare me the task of his moral character:--

"On Sunday evening the symptoms of his lordship's disorder, which for
a week past had alarmed us, put on a fatal appearance, and his lordship
believed himself to be a dying man. From this time h