rs duke of Buckingham was
his first patron, who notwithstanding his fickleness, and inconsistent
levity, never forsook him; a circumstance which has induced many to
believe, that that nobleman owed much to the refinement of our author;
and that his Rehearsal had never been so excellent, nor so pungent a
satire, had it not first passed under Dr. Sprat's perusal.

This learned prelate died of an apoplexy, May the 20th, 1713, at his
episcopal feat in Bromly in Kent, in the 79th year of his age; and was
interred in the Abbey-Church of Westminster.

As he lived esteemed by all his acquaintance, as well as the clergy of
his diocese, so he died regretted by them, and indeed by all men of
taste; for it is the opinion of many, that he raised the English tongue
to that purity and beauty, which former writers were wholly strangers
to, and which those who have succeeded him, can but imitate[2].

The benevolence of our author is very conspicuous in his last will, in
favour of his widow and son; in which he commands them to extend that
beneficence to his poor relations, which they always found from him; and
not to suffer any of those to want, whose necessitous merit, had shared
in all the external advantages he possessed. As he may be proposed
(considered meerly as a writer) for an example worthy of imitation; so
in the character of a dignified clergyman, he has likewise a claim to
be copied in those retired and private virtues, in those acts of
beneficence and humility, and that unaffected and primitive piety, for
which he was justly distinguished.

[Footnote 1: Elegy in a Country Church-Yard, by Mr. Grey.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Cooper, in his ingenious work entitled the Life of
Socrates, speaks in a very different strain of the bishop's History of
the Royal Society, which he calls a 'Fustian History!' and adds, that
'it was esteemed an excellent competition by the metaphor-hunting mob of
silly writings in Charles II's reign.']

* * * * *

CHARLES MONTAGUE (Earl of HALLIFAX)

Was born the 16th of April 1661, and received the rudiments of his
education at Westminster-school: From thence he was removed to
Trinity-College in Cambridge, where by the brightness of his parts he
was early distinguished; and coming to town soon after the death of king
Charles the IId. he contracted an intimacy with the earl of Dorset, Sir
Charles Sedley, and other wits of the age. After the accession of king
William a