y writer of his period.
In his boyhood Somers was a poet; in his maturer years the friend of
poets. The friend of Prior and Gay, Arbuthnot and Pope, Lord Chancellor
Harcourt, wrote verses of more than ordinary merit, and alike in periods
of official triumph and in times of retirement valued the friendship of
men of wit above the many successes of his public career. Lord
Chancellor King, author of 'Constitution and Discipline of the Primitive
Church,' was John Locke's dutiful nephew and favorite companion. King's
immediate successor was extolled by Pope in the lines,

O teach us, Talbot! thou'rt unspoil'd by wealth,
That secret rare, between the extremes to move,
Of mad good-nature and of mean self-love.
Who is it copies Talbot's better part,
To ease th' oppress'd, and raise the sinking heart?

But Talbot's fairest eulogy was penned by his son's tutor, Alexander
Thomson--a poet who had no reason to feel gratitude to Talbot's official
successor. Ere he thoroughly resolved to devote himself to law, the cold
and formal Hardwicke had cherished a feeble ambition for literary
distinction; and under its influence he wrote a paper that appeared in
the _Spectator_. Blackstone's entrance at the Temple occasioned his
metrical 'Farewell' to his muse. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge
Lord Chancellor Charles Yorke was a chief contributor to the 'Athenian
Letters,' and it would have been well for him had he in after-life given
to letters a portion of the time which he sacrificed to ambition.
Thurlow's churlishness and overbearing temper are at this date trifling
matters in comparison with his friendship for Cowper and Samuel Johnson,
and his kindly aid to George Crabbe. Even more than for the wisdom of
his judgments Mansfield is remembered for his intimacy with 'the wits,'
and his close friendship with that chief of them all, who exclaimed,
"How sweet an Ovid, Murray, was our boast," and in honor of that "Sweet
Ovid" penned the lines,

"Graced as thou art, with all the power of words,
So known, so honored in the House of Lords"--

verses deliciously ridiculed by the parodist who wrote,

"Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks:
And he has chambers in the King's Bench walks."

As an atonement for many defects, Alexander Wedderburn had one
virtue--an honest respect for letters that made him in opening manhood
seek the friendship of Hume, at a later date solicit a pension for Dr.
Johnson, and