LORD BOLINGBROKE.

THIS noble, philosophical, and political author, the friend of Pope, &c. was born at Battersea, in Surrey, in 1678. His mother dying young, he passed his infancy under his grandmother, whose spiritual guide was the celebrated presbyterian, Daniel Burgess, but the impression which young Bolingbroke received from this circumstance, was a rooted aversion to that austere party. At a proper age he was sent to Eton School, and thence removed to Christ-church, Oxford. In both these places his genius and understanding won him the admiration of his contemporaries. United with the graces of a handsome person, his manner and address were irresistibly engaging; he had a quick apprehension, great strength of memory, peculiar subtlety in reasoning, and a masterly elocution; but for some years all these endowments were lavished in finishing the character of a complete rake: he was, however, the friend and protector of Dryden in his declining years, and prefixed a copy of verses to his translation of Virgil in 1697.

His first wife was the daughter and coheiress of sir Henry Winchescomb, of Bucklebury, Berks. In 1700 he made his appearance in the house of commons as member for Wooton Basset, in Wilts. In 1704, having attached himself to Harley's party, he was appointed secretary at war, and of the marines. Upon Harley's removal from the seals, in 1707, Bolingbroke, following his friend's fortune, resigned his employments. In the parliament of 1708 he had no seat; but in 1710, Harley being appointed chancellor and under secretary, St. John was appointed to the important office of secretary of state. He sustained almost the whole weight of the difficulties in the peace of Utrecht; and in 1712 was created baron St. John of Lydiard Tregoze, in Wiltshire, and viscount Bolingbroke, and in the same year appointed lord lieutenant of the county of Essex. He at length formed the design of supplanting his old friend Harley, then earl of Oxford, in the management of public affairs, a project which in the issue proved unfortunate for them both, though Bolingbroke lived to discover that Oxford "had no friendship for any body.”

After Bolingbroke's exile to France he accepted the office of secretary under the Preteader; but the year 1715 had scarcely expired, when the seals and papers of his new office were taken from him. To make his peace at home, through the mediation of lord Stair, who declared himself perfectly convinced of his sincerity, he procured a conditional promise of pardon. In 1717 he married his second wife, widow of the marquis de Villette, and with her passed his time in France till 1723, when his majesty granted him a full pardon and he returned to England. Ruffled by disappointments in public life, he again retired to France in 1735, but returned upon the death of his father in 1742, and settled at Battersea, the ancient seat of his family, where he died in November 1751, on the verge of fourscore: his remains were interred in the parish church at that place.

Lord Bolingbroke is chiefly to be admired for his profound knowledge of history, his grand ideas, and his bold and manly eloquence. The latter lord Chesterfield called, “not studied or laboured, but a flowing happiness of diction," which became so familiar to him, that his ordinary conversation might have been printed without the least correction. However, he could ill brook a superior, and was little scrupulous in the pursuit of power, or the gratification of resentment.

Mallet, who was entrusted with the care of lord Bolingbroke's manuscripts, published one volume quarto in 1754, and four more in the following year. An Analysis of his lordship's Philosophical Works, composed by the late unfortunate earl Ferrers, was also published in a small size in 1760.

GEORGE BUCHANAN, the elegant poet and historian, was born in the year 1506, near Killkerne, in the shire of Lennox, now usually called Dumbarton, Scotland. He was of a good family, though reduced to indigence: happily, an uncle sent him to Paris to be educated. His uncle dying, necessity induced him to enter as a common soldier with the French troops that landed in Scotland: leaving them, and struggling some time with poverty and misfortune, in his twentieth year he obtained the professorship of grammar in the college of St. Barbe; from whence he was taken by Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassilis, as tutor or domestic chaplain. During his abode with this nobleman he translated into Latin, Linacre's Rudiments of Grammar. Returning to Scotland with the earl, he obtained the notice of James V. and was appointed tutor to his natural son James, afterwards the famous earl of Murray. In 1538 he published Franciscanus, a bitter invective; but he had previously begun his warfare against the monks by a satirical poem, entitled Somnium. After he had thus committed himself with the clergy, the king meanly deserted him, and suffered him to be imprisoned for heresy. From prison he first escaped to England, next to France, and though invited to Portugal, he was there accused of writing Franciscanus, and imprisoned by the Inquisition, where, after remaining a year and a half, he was transferred to the milder durance of a monastery. Here he beguiled the tedium of confinement, by beginning the translation of David's Psalms into Latin verse.

Obtaining his liberty in 1551, he was still so much favoured by the king of Portugal, that he was allowed a small pension, and invited to remain in that country. Embarking, however, for England, its unsettled state under Edward VI. induced him to leave it for France, whence the marshal de Brisac engaged him to be tutor to his son in Piedmont ; in which employment he remained five years, partly in Italy and partly in France. He returned to Scotland in 1560, where he openly embraced the Protestant religion, and was soon after made principal of St. Leonard's college, in the university of St Andrews.

"His former pupil the earl of Murray now coming into power, Buchanan closely connected himself with him, and the party that opposed queen Mary. He was afterwards nominated preceptor to the young king James VI. a station he occupied several years. In 1571 he published his Detectio Mariæ Reginæ, a most virulent attack upon the character and conduct of queen Mary, charging her with the murder of her husband, and a criminal passion for David Rizzio. Queen Elizabeth allowed him a pension of 100l. a year. The last twelve or thirteen years of his life he spent in composing his History of Scotland, which first appeared at Edinburgh in 1582. He survived this publication but a short time, dying at the age of seventy-six. Finding he had not money enough to pay for his funeral, he ordered his servant to bestow what there was upon the poor. The city of Edinburgh, however, honoured itself by burying him at the public expense. A valuable edition of the whole of his works, collectively, was published at Edinburgh, in 2 vols. folio, in 1714, and reprinted at Leyden, in 1725, in two vols. 4to.

In his history of Scotland, written in Latin, he is said to have happily united the brevity of Sallust with the perspicuity and elegance of Livy.

It is further said of Buchanan," that he could imitate all the Roman poets with such accuracy, that he who compares will often be tempted to prefer the copy to the original!"