I To the RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMMER S, BARON of EVESHAM. MY LORD, SHOULD not act the part of an impartial Spectator, if I dedicated the following papers to one who is not of the most confummate and most acknowledged merit. None but a person of a finished character, can be the proper patron of a work, which endeavours to cultivate and polish human life, but promoting virtue and knowledge, and by recommending whatfoever may be either useful or ornamental to foci-ety. I know that the homage I now pay You, offer ing a kind of violence to one who is as folicitous to shun applause, as he is affiduous to deferve it. But, my Lord, this is perhaps the only particular in which your prudence will be always disappoint 80 While justice, candour, equanimity, a zeal for the good of your country, and the most perfuafive eloquence in bringing over others to it, are valuable diftinctions, You are not to expect that the publick will fo far comply with your inclinati. ons, as to forbear celebrating fuch extraordinary qualities. It is in vain that you have endeavoured VOL. I. a2 to to conceal your share of merit, in the many national fervices which you have effected. Do what you will, the present age will be talking of your virtues, though posterity alone will do them juftice. 200M Other men pass thro' oppofitions and contending interests in the ways of ambition; but your great abilities have been invited to power, and importuned to accept of advancement. Nor is it strange that this should happen to your Lordship, who could bring into the service of your fovereign the arts and policies of ancient Greece and Rome; as well as the most exact knowledge of our own conftitution in particular, and of the interests of Europe in general'; to which I must also add, a certain dignity in yourself, that (to say the least of it) has been always equal to those great honours which have been conferred upon You. It is very well known how much the Church owed to You in the most dangerous day it ever faw, that of the arraignment of its prelates; and how far the civil power, in the late and present reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wif dom. But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your adminiftration, would be a more proper work for an history than for an address of this nature. Your Lordship appears as great in your private life, as in the most important offices which you have borne. I would therefore rather chuse to fpeak of the pleasure you afford all who are admitted into your conversation, of your elegant taste in all the polite parts of learning, of your great humanity and complacency of manners, and of the furprifing influence which is peculiar to You in making every one who converses with your Lordship prefer You to himself, without thinking the less meanly of his own talents. But if I should take notice of all that might be obferved in your Lordship, I fhould have nothing new to say upon any other character of distinction. |