on many of your actions: but αἰδέομαι Τρώας is an expreffion which Tully often used, when he would do what he dares not, and fears the cenfure of the Romans.

I have fometimes been forced to amplify on others; but here where the fubject is fo fruitful, that the harveft overcomes the reaper, I am shortened by my chain, and can only fee what is forbidden me to reach: fince it is not permitted me to commend you, according to the extent of my wishes, and much less is it in my power to make my commendations equal to your merits. Yet in this frugality of your praises, there are fome things which I cannot omit, without detracting from your character.

You

have fo formed your own education as enables you to pay the debt you owe your country; or more properly fpeaking, both your countries: because you were born, I may almost fay in purple, at the castle of Dublin, when your grandfather was lordlieutenant, and have lince been bred in the court of England.

If this address had been in verse, I might have called you, as Claudian calls Mercury, Numen commune, gemino faciens commercia mundo. The better to fatisfy this

double

1

double obligation, you have early culticated the genius you have to arms, that when the fervice of Britain or Ireland fhall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to the benefit of either country. You began in the cabinet what you afterwards practised in the camp; and thus both Lucullus and Cæfar (to omit a crowd of fhining Romans) formed themselves to war by the study of history, and by the examples of the greateft captains, both of Greece and Italy, before their time. I name thofe two commanders in particular, becaufe they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman leaders; and that Lucullus in particular, having only the theory of war from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be sent into the field, against the most formidable enemy of Rome. Tully indeed was called the learned conful in derifion; but then he was not born a foldier: his head was turned another way: when he read the Tacticks, he was thinking on the bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown away on a general who dares not make use of what he knows. I commend it only in a man of courage

courage and refolution; in him it will direct his martial fpirit; and teach him the way to the best victories, which are those that are least bloody, and which, though atchieved by the hand, are managed by the head. Science diftinguifhes a man of honour from one of thofe athletic brutes whom undefervedly we call heroes. Curled be the poet, who first honoured with that name a mere Ajax, a man-killing idiot. The Ulyffes of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the fhield for which he pleaded: there was engraven on it, plans of cities, and maps of countries, which Ajax could not comprehend, but looked on them as ftupidly as his fellow-beast the lion. But on the other fide, your Grace has given yourself the education of his rival; you have studied every fpot of ground in Flanders, which for thete ten years past has been the fcene of battles and of fieges. No wonder if you performed your part with fuch applause on a theatre which you understood fo well.

If I defigned this for a poetical encomium, it were easy to enlarge on fo copi

ous

ous a subject; but confining myself to the feverity of truth, and to what is becoming me to fay, I must not only pass over many inftances of your military skill, but alfo thofe of your affiduous diligence in the war and of your perfonal bravery, attended with an ardent thirst of honour; a long train of generofity; profuseness of doing good; a loul unfatisfied with all it has done; and an unextinguished defire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own hiftorians; I am, as Virgil says, Spatiis exclufus iniquis.

Yet not to be wholly filent of all your charities, I muft ftay a little on one action, which preferred the relief of others to the confideration of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a fault only pardonable to your youth) had tranfported you so far before your friends, that they were unable to follow, much less to fuccour you; when you were not only dangerously, but in all appearance mortally wounded, when in that defperate condition you were made prifoner, and carried to Namur, at that time in poffeffion of the French; then it was, my Lord, that

you

you took a confiderable part of what was remitted to you of your own revenues, and as a memorable inftance of your heroic charity, put it into the hands of count Guifcard, who was governor of the place, to be distributed among your fellow-prifoners. The French commander, charmed with the greatnels of your foul, accordingly configned it to the ufe for which it was intended by the donor: by which means the lives of fo many miferable men were faved, and a comfortable provision made for their subsistence, who had otherwife perished, had not you been the companion of their misfortune: or rather fent by Providence, like another Jofeph, 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-fufferer? and how glorious for you, that you chofe 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 chriftian: Non ignara mali, miferis fuccurrere difco. All men, even thofe of a different interest, and

contrary