affable to all men, that his face and countenance
was always present, and vacant, to his company, and held any cloudiness,
and less pleasantness of the visage, a kind of rudeness or incivility,
became, on a sudden, less communicable; and thence, very sad, pale, and
exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he
had minded before always with more neatness, and industry, and expense,
than is usual to so great a soul, he was not now only incurious, but too
negligent; and in his reception of suitors, and the necessary or casual
addresses to his place, so quick, and sharp, and severe, that there
wanted not some men--strangers to his nature and disposition--who
believed him proud and imperious; from which no mortal man was ever more
free....
When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and
vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought
might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep
silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent,
ingeminate the word _Peace, Peace_; and would passionately profess,
"that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and
desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and
would shortly break his heart." This made some think, or pretend to
think, "that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have been
glad the king should have bought it at any price;" which was a most
unreasonable calumny. As if a man, that was himself the most punctual
and precise in every circumstance that might reflect upon conscience or
honor, could have wished the king to have committed a trespass against
either....
In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very
cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's
regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on
both sides with musketeers; from whence he was shot with a musket in the
lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his
body was not found till the next morning; till when, there was some
hope he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest friends, who knew
his temper, received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that
incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age,
having so much despatched the true business of life, that the oldest
rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not
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