A Prologue to the Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and an Epilogue to Mr. Southern’s Spartan Dame.  In the former he has the following beautiful lines on Ambition;

  Ambition is a mistress few enjoy! 
  False to our hopes, and to our wishes coy;
  The bold she bafflles, and defeats the strong;
  And all are ruined who pursue her long;
  Yet so bewitching are her fatal charms,
  We think it heav’n to die within her arms.

Major Pack obliged the world with some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Wycherley, which are prefixed to Theobald’s edition of that author.  Mr. Jacob mentions a piece of his which he saw in Ms. entitled Religion and Philosophy, which, says he, with his other works, demonstrate the author to be a polite writer, and a man of wit and gallantry.

This amiable gentleman died at Aberdeen in Scotland, in the month of September 1728, colonel Montague’s regiment, in which he was then a major, being quartered there.

[Footnote A:  Vide Jacob’s Lives.]

* * * * *

Sir WILLIAM DAWES, Baronet (Archbishop of YORK,)

This revd. prelate was descended from an ancient, and honourable family in the county of Essex; he was educated at Merchant-Taylor’s school, London, and from thence elected to St. John’s College in Oxford, of which he was afterwards fellow.

He was the youngest of four brothers, three of whom dying young, the title, and estate of the family fell to him.  As soon as he had taken his first degree in arts, and upon the family estate devolving to him, he resigned his fellowship, and left Oxford.  For some time he gave his attention to the affairs of his estate, but finding his inclination lead him more to study, than rural affairs, he entered into holy orders.  Sir William did not long remain in the church without preferment; his fortune, and family assisted him to rise; for it often happens that these advantages will do much more for a man, as well in the ecclesiastical, as in other classes of life, than the brightest parts without them.  Before he was promoted to the mitre, he was made master of Catherine Hall in Cambridge, chaplain to Queen Anne, and dean of Bocking.

In the year 1708 he was consecrated bishop of Chester, and in 1713 was translated to the archbishopric of York.  While he was at the university, before he went into orders, he wrote the Anatomy of Atheism, a Poem, dedicated to Sir George Darcy Bart. printed in the year 1701, 8vo.

The design of this piece, as his lordship declares in the preface, ’is to expose the folly of those men, who are arrived at that pitch of impudence and prophaneness, that they think it a piece of wit to deny the Being of a God, and to laugh at that which they cannot argue against.’  Such characters are well described in the following lines,