“At another time he said, ‘I must leave my soul in the same state it was in before this illness; I find this a very inconvenient time for solicitude about any thing.’
“On the evening, when the symptoms of death came on, he said, ‘I shall die; but it will not be your fault.’ When lord and lady Valentia came to see his lordship, he gave them his solemn benediction, and said, ‘Be good, be virtuous, my lord; you must come to this.’ Thus he continued giving his dying benediction to all around him. On Monday morning a lucid interval gave some small hopes, but these vanished in the evening; and he continued dying, but with very little uneasiness, till Tuesday morning, August 22, when, between seven and eight o’clock, he expired, almost without a groan.”
His lordship was buried at Hagley; and the following inscription is cut on the side of his lady’s monument:
This unadorned stone was placed here
by the particular desire and express
directions of the right honourable
George Lord Lyttelton,
Who died August 22, 1773, aged 64.
Lord Lyttelton’s poems are the works of a man of literature and judgment, devoting part of his time to versification. They have nothing to be despised, and little to be admired. Of his Progress of Love, it is sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral. His blank verse in Blenheim has neither much force nor much elegance. His little performances, whether songs or epigrams, are sometimes sprightly and sometimes insipid. His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which cannot much tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or surprises. But from this censure ought to be excepted his Advice to Belinda, which, though for the most part written when he was very young, contains much truth and much prudence, very elegantly and vigorously expressed, and shows a mind attentive to life, and a power of poetry which cultivation might have raised to excellence.
| END OF VOL. VIII. |
[1] The difficulty of settling Prior’s birthplace is great. In the register of his college he is called, at his admission by the president, Matthew Prior, of Winburn, in Middlesex; by himself, next day, Matthew Prior, of Dorsetshire, in which county, not in Middlesex, Winborn, or Winborne, as it stands in the Villare, is found. When he stood candidate for his fellowship, five years afterwards, he was registered again by himself as of Middlesex. The last record ought to be preferred, because it was made upon oath. It is observable, that, as a native of Winborne, he is styled filius Georgii Prior, generosi; not consistently with the common account of the meanness of his birth. Dr. J.
[2] Samuel Prior kept the Rummer tavern near Charing-cross, in 1685. The annual feast of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields was held at his house, Oct. 14, that year. N.