Fed with soft dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.”[[396]]
In strong contrast with Halifax, how must the social qualities of Somers have risen in comparison; how refreshing must have been his good sense, which set forth all his great qualifications in order and beauty; how delightful that delicate sense of politeness which sprang in him from a humanity of disposition; which appeared in the least important of his actions; which manifested itself in the kindly expression of the countenance, in the refined manners, in the very tone of his voice. How admirable at once the solidity and the eloquence of a mind which comprehended not only the most abstruse sciences, the most profound and varied knowledge, but which displayed the graceful acquirements of an accomplished gentleman. Whilst Halifax employed his hours of recreation “to fetch and carry sing-song up and down,” Somers, by dividing his time between the public scenes of life, and the retirement of a cheerful, not an unemployed and gloomy and selfish retirement, attained a perfection of taste, an elegance and purity of style, that few men of his profession and station, engrossed as they must necessarily be with dry and recondite researches, have been enabled to acquire. He had, says Swift, “very little taste for conversation;”[[397]] and, unlike his associate Buffo, who
“Received of wits an undistinguished race,”
consoled himself, in his hours of recreation, “with the company of an illiterate chaplain or favourite servant.”—Yet the man who never delivered an opinion of a piece of poetry, a statue, or a picture, without exciting admiration from the just, and happy, and delicate turns of expression which he adopted, must have loved to commune with higher minds than the unsuitable companions whom Swift has assigned to his leisure hours.[[398]]
Queen Anne retained in his office, as lord high steward, William Duke of Devonshire. This nobleman, “a patriot among the men, a Corydon among the ladies,”[[399]] had officiated at her Majesty’s coronation, as he had done at that of William and Mary,—where his stately deportment and handsome person, as in costly attire he bore the regal crown, eclipsed the sickly monarch, lowly in stature, behind whom he walked, whilst his daughter bore Queen Mary’s train. Whilst a boy, he had borne the royal train, with three other noble youths, at a similar ceremonial, when Charles the Second ascended the throne. Yet, though descending from a stock devoted to the Stuarts, and though his grandmother, the celebrated Countess of Devonshire, was instrumental in the Restoration, the high-minded peer became, upon conviction, a strenuous supporter of that liberty and of those rights upon which the second James so largely encroached. He voted for the bill of exclusion, and spoke boldly, though always with politeness and temper, upon that famous measure. At the trial of his friend Lord Russell, when it was almost deemed criminal to be a witness in behalf of the illustrious prisoner, Lord Cavendish, with the Earl of Anglesea, Mr. Howard, Tillotson, and Burnet, gave his testimony to the honour, the prudence, and good life of the distinguished sufferer. When he found that the doom of Russell was inevitable, he sent him a message, entreating to be allowed to change cloaks with him, and to remain in the prison whilst Russell should make his escape. The noble refusal of the generous offer is well known. It was Cavendish’s sad office to attend his beloved, and more than ever honoured friend, to the last; to solace the wretched Lady Russell, and bear the last message of affection from the noblest of beings to one who merited all his love. In the court, and in the senate, Lord Cavendish displayed the gallant qualities which had been manifested in the prison of Lord Russell. Insulted in the precincts of the court by Colonel Culpeper, a creature of King James’s, he retaliated by dragging the offending party out of the presence-chamber, and caning him on the head. For this act he was prosecuted and fined 5000l. But Cavendish, then Earl of Devonshire, chose rather to go to the King’s Bench prison, than to pay a fine which he thought exorbitant. He escaped to Chatsworth, where, in the midst of difficulties occasioned by loans in the former earl’s time to the exiled family never repaid, and aggravated by Lord Cavendish’s own rash castigation of Culpeper, his energetic mind framed a plan for remodelling the venerable pile in which he had sought security. The famous waterworks, the gardens, pictures, statues, and a great portion of the modernised structure, were the result of this nobleman’s magnificent taste and profuse expenditure.[[400]] His splendour and liberality were guided by an economy as essential to the peer who wishes to retain his independence, as to the peasant. His attention to the meanest of his guests was such, that when he gave an entertainment, he would send for the groom-porter to inquire if he, and all of the same degree, had received due provision. His love of liberty was shown in a favourite saying of his, “that the deer in his park were happier than subjects under a tyrannical king:” or, as he expressed the same sentiments in his own poetry—
“O despicable state of all that groan
Under a blind dependency on one!
How far inferior to the herds that range,
With native freedom, o’er the woods and plains!”[[401]]