This account Dr. Elrington has taken from the narrative given by Dr. Parr, who adds, that he had received this account of the testimony borne by the king from Colonel Legg and Mr. Kirk themselves:—
"This is the substance of two certificates, taken divers times under the hands of these two gentlemen of unquestionable credit; both which, since they agree in substance, I thought fit to contract into one testimony, which I have inserted here, having the originals by me, to produce if occasion be."—Parr's Life of Ussher, p. 61.
Indeed, considering the great and uninterrupted friendship which subsisted between Ussher and Strafford, considering that the primate was his chosen friend during his trial and imprisonment, and attended him to the scaffold, nothing could be more improbable than that he should have advised the king to consent to his death. At all events, the story is contradicted by those most competent to speak to its truth, by the archbishop and by the king; and therefore, in a work so deservedly popular as Lord Campbell's, one cannot but regret that any currency should be given to a calumny so injurious to a prelate whose character is as deserving of our esteem, as his learning is of our veneration.
PEREGRINUS.
POETICAL COINCIDENCES.
Sheridan.
In the account which Moore has given, in his Life of Sheridan, of the writings left unfinished by that celebrated orator and dramatist, he states:
"There also remain among his papers three acts of a drama without a name, written evidently in haste, and with scarcely any correction."
From this production he gives the following verses, to which he has appended the note I have placed immediately after them:—
"Oh yield, fair lids, the treasures of my heart,
Release those beams, that make this mansion bright;