Yet fince the perverse tempers of mankind, fince oppreffion on one fide, and ambition on the other, are fometimes the unavoidable occafions of war; that courage, that magnanimity, and refolution, which is born with you, cannot be too much commended: and here it grieves me that I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on many of your adtions: but αἰδέομαι Τρῶας is an expreffion which Tully often ufed, when he would do what he dares not, and fears the cenfure of the Ro mans. I have fometimes been forced to amplify on others; but here, where the subject is so fruitful that the harvest overcomes the reaper, I am shortened by my chain, and can only fee what is forbidden me to reach fince it is not permitted me to commend you according to the extent of my wishes, and much lefs is it in my power to make my commendations equal to your merits. Yet, in this frugality of your praifes, there are fome things which I cannot omit, without detracting from your character. You have fo formed your own education as enables you to pay the debt you owe your country; or, more properly speaking, both your countries: be.cause you were born, I may almost lay in purple, at the .caftle of Dublin, when your grandfather was lordlieutenant, and have fince been bred in the court of England. If this addrefs had been in, verfe, I might have called you, as Claudian calls Mercury, "Numen commune, "gemino faciens commercia mundo." The better to fatisfy this double obligation, you have early cultivated the genius your have to arms, that when the service of Britain or Ireland shall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to the benefit of either country. You began in the cabinet what you afterwards practised in the camp; and thus both Lucullus and Cæfar (to omit a crowd of fhining Romans) formed themselves to war by the study of hiftory, and by the examples of the greatest captains, both of Greece and Italy, before their time. I name those two commanders in particular, because they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman leaders; and that Lucullus in particular, having only the theory of war from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be fent into the field, against the moft formidable enemy of Rome. Tully indeed was called the learned conful in derifion; but then he was not born a foldier: his head was turned another way: when he read the Tacticks, he was thinking on the bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown away on a general who dares not make ufe of what he knows. I commend it only in a man of courage and refolution; in him it will direct his martial spirit; and teach him the way to the best victories, which are thofe that are leaft bloody, and which, though atchieved by the hand, are managed by the head. Science diftinguishes a man of honour from one of thofe athletic brutes whom undefervedly we call heroes. Curfed be the poet, who first honoured with that name a meer Ajax, a man-killing ideot. The Ulyffes of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the fhield for for which he pleaded: there were engraven on it, plans of cities, and maps of countries, which Ajax could not comprehend, but looked on them as ftupidly as his fellow-beaft the lion. But, on the other fide, your Grace has given yourfelf the education of his rival: you have studied every spot of ground in Flanders, which for these ten years paft has been the scene of battles and of fieges. No wonder if you performed your part with fuch applause on a theatre which you underftood fo well. If I defigned this for a poetical encomium, it were eafy to enlarge on fo copious a subject; but, confining myself to the severity of truth, and to what is becoming me to fay, I must not only pafs over many inftances of your military skill, but also thofe of your affiduous diligence in the war: and of your personal bravery, attended with an ardent thirst of honour; a long train of generofity; profufenefs of doing good; a foul unfatisfied with all it has done; and an unextinguished defire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own hiftorians; I am, as Virgil fays, "Spatiis exclufus iniquis." Yet, not to be wholly filent of all your charities, I must stay a little on one action, which preferred the relief of others to the confideration of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a fault only pardonable to your youth) had tranfported you fo far before your friends, that they were unable to follow, much less to fuccour you; when you were not only dangerously, but in all appearance mortally wound ed, ed, when in that defperate condition you were made prifoner, and carried to Namur, at that time in poffeffion of the French; then it was, my lord, that you took a confiderable part of what was remitted to you of your own revenues, and as a memorable inftance of your heroic charity, put it into the hands of count Guifcard, who was governor of the place, to be diftributed among your fellow-prisoners. The French commander, charmed with the greatness of your foul, accordingly configned it to the ufe for which it was intended by the donor: by which means the lives of so many miferable men were faved, and a comfortable provifion made for their fubfiftence, who had otherwise perifhed, had not you been the companion of their miffortune or rather fent by Providence, like another Jofeph, to keep out famine from invading thofe whom in humility you called your brethren. How happy was it for thofe poor creatures, that your Grace was made their fellow-fufferer! and how glorious for you, that you chofe to want, rather than not relieve the wants of others! The heathen poet, in commending the charity of Dido to the Trojans, fpoke like a chriftian; "Non ignara mali, miferis fuccurrere difco." All men, even thofe of a different intereft, and contrary principles, muft praife this action, as the most eminent for piety, not only in this degenerate age, but almost in any of the former; when men were made" de meliore luto;" when examples of charity were frequent, and when they were in being, "Teucri pulcherrima proles, magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis." No envy can detract detract from this: it will shine in history; and, like Iwans, grow whiter the longer it endures: and the name of ORMOND will be more celebrated in his captivity, than in his greatest triumphs. But all actions of your grace are of a piece; as waters keep the tenor of their fountains: your compaffion is general, and has the fame effect as well on enemies as friends. It is fo much in your nature to do good, that your life is but one continued act of placing benefits on many, as the fun is always carrying his light to fome part or other of the world: and were it not that your reafon guides you where to give, I might almost fay that you could not help beftowing more, than is confifting with the fortune of a private man, or with the will of any but an Alexander. What wonder is it then, that, being born for a bleffing to mankind, your fuppofed death in that engagement was fo generally lamented through the nation! The concernment for it was as univerfal as the lofs and though the gratitude might be counterfeit in fome, yet the tears of all were real where every man deplored his private part in that calamity, and even those, who had not tafted of your favours, yet built fo much on the fame of your beneficence, that they bemoaned the lofs of their expectations. : This brought the untimely death of your great father into fresh remembrance; as if the fame decree had passed on two, short fucceffive generations of the virtuous; and I repeated to myself the fame verses, which I had formerly applied to him: "Oftendunt terris hunc tantùm fata, |
