genious arts; and became not only a good lawyer, but very learned in history, mathematics, philosophy, and music3. In 1671 he was made the king's solicitorgeneral, and received the honour of knighthood. In 1673 he was constituted attorney-general; and in the following year was appointed lord chief justice of the court of common pleas. Upon the death of the earl of Nottingham in 1682, the great seal was committed to his custody, and in Sept. 1683 he was created a baron of the realm by the title of lord Guilford in Surry. He died at his seat at Wroxton, September 5, 16854.

The author of the Lives of the Lord-chancellors avers, that he ran very much with the stream of the court, to the endangering of the Protestant religion in this kingdom. He certainly did not want zeal to promote the good of his country, which he thought would most effectually be done, by supporting the church and crown of England in all legal prerogatives; and from these principles he never swerved. His private character is said to have been strictly virtuous and unexceptionable.

In Harl. MSS. 6284, 6800, are two of his speeches, one to sir Robert Granger, on his being elected speaker, and another explanatory of the king's speech.

His lordship composed several concertos in two or three parts; and his philosophical theory of music was thus epitomised in the memoir of his life:

"All musical sounds consist of tones, for irregular noises are foreign to the subject. Every tone consists of distinct pulses or strokes, in equal time; which being indistinguishably swift, seem continual. Swifter pulses are accordingly (in sound) sharper, and the slower, flatter. When diverse run together, if the pulses are timed in certain proportions to each other, which produce coincidences at regular and constant periods; those may be harmonious, else discord. And, in the practice of musick, the stated accords fall in these proportions of pulsation, viz.,,,, f. Hence flow the common denominations of 8th, 5th, 4th, 3d, 2d; and these are produced upon a monochord by abscission of these parts,,,,; of all which the fuller demonstration is a task beyond what is here intended." To accomplish an ocular representation of these pulses, adds the biographer, his lordship made a foundation upon paper by a perpetual order of parallel lines; and those were to signify the flux of time equably and when a pulse happened, it was marked by a point upon one of those lines, and if continued so as to sound a bass tone, it was marked upon every eighth line, and that might be termed the bass; and then an upper part, which pulsed as or octave, was marked (beginning with the first of the bass) upon every fourth line, which is twice as swift. And 30 all the other harmonious proportions, which showed their coincidences, as well with the bass as with one another. And there was also showed a beautiful and uniform aspect in the composition of these accords when drawn together: this as to times.

The ordinary collation of sounds is commonly made by numbers, which not referred to a real cause or foundation in nature, may be just, but withal very obscure, and imparting of no knowledge. Witness the mathematicians musical proportion. His lordship did not decline numbers, but derived them from plain truths. He found 360 the aptest for those subdivisions that music required; and applying that to an open string, or monochord, each musical tone, formed by abscission of a part of the string, is expressible by those numbers so reduced in proportion. As of the string pinched off at or 180, an octave, and as 240; and so of the rest down to the tone or second, which cuts off, and the semitone, &c.

Succeeding virtuosi extended this scheme by commentaries and experiments, some adopting and others opposing its practicability.]

ANNE,

MARCHIONESS OF WHARTON,

[DAUGHTER and co-heiress of sir Henry Lee, of Ditchly in Oxfordshire, and first wife of Thomas, marquis of Wharton, by whom she had no issue. In 1681, says Mr. Ballard3, she was in France on account of her health. About the year 1682 she held a correspondence with Dr. Burnet, who submitted some of his poetical exercitations to her inspection. Two of her ladyship's letters, lord Orford observes, are in a very pleasing style 4. They are printed with Dr. Burnet's in the General Dictionary. One of them runs as follows, and was addressed to her husband:

"Forgive me for giving you the trouble of a letter

every post; but I am indeed grown so fond a fool, that I can't help it. The other day, in a fit I almost beat my brains out against the pavement, and found the want of boards; for, a little more, and it had eased you of the inconvenience of a wife. But apropo,

that day your brother Hamden met Mr. Savile 5 in my lodgings; and not knowing him, began extremely to

• Sir Henry Lee having no son, left his estate to be divided between this lady and her sister, the countess of Abingdon, whose memory Dryden has celebrated in a funeral panegyric entitled Eleonora. Ballard's Memoirs, p. 297.

* From the General Dictionary, vol. x. p. 122. * See article of Philip, duke of Wharton.

• Embassador from England to France.