adultery, but it
was averred that for the sake of peace he had imprisoned in a madhouse
his mistress's lawful husband, who was originally a Worcester tradesman.
The chief authority for this startling imputation is Mrs. Manley, who
was encouraged, if not actually paid, by Swift to lampoon his political
adversaries. In her 'New Atalantis'--the 'Cicero' of which scandalous
work was understood by its readers to signify 'Lord Somers,'--this
shameless woman entertained quid-nuncs and women of fashion by putting
this abominable story in written words, the coarseness of which accorded
with the repulsiveness of the accusation.

At a time when honest writers on current politics were punished with
fine and imprisonment, the pillory and the whip, statesmen and
ecclesiastics were not ashamed to keep such libellers as Mrs. Manley in
their pay. That the reader may fully appreciate the change which time
has wrought in the tone of political literature, let him contrast the
virulence and malignity of this unpleasant passage from the New
Atalantis, with the tone which recently characterized the public
discussion of the case which is generally known by the name of 'The
Edmunds Scandal.'

Notwithstanding her notorious disregard of truth, it is scarcely
credible that Mrs. Manley's scurrilous charge was in no way countenanced
by facts. At the close of the seventeenth century to keep a mistress was
scarcely regarded as an offence against good morals; and living in
accordance with the fashion of the time, it is probable that Somers did
that which Lord Thurlow, after an interval of a century, was able to do
without rousing public disapproval. Had his private life been spotless,
he would doubtless have taken legal steps to silence his traducer; and
unsustained by a knowledge that he dared not court inquiry into his
domestic arrangements, Mrs. Manley would have used her pen with greater
caution. But all persons competent to form an opinion on the case have
agreed that the more revolting charges of the indictment were the
baseless fictions of a malicious and unclean mind.

CHAPTER X.

BROTHERS IN TROUBLE.

In the 'Philosophical Dictionary,' Voltaire, laboring under
misapprehension or carried away by perverse humor, made the following
strange announcement:--"Il est public en Angleterre, et on voudroit le
nier en vain, que le Chancelier Cowper epousa deux femmes, qui vecurent
ensemble dans sa maison avec une concorde singuliere qui fit