Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa Parenti, &c.

Thus translated by Mr. Dryden: 

  O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word,
  To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
  I warn’d thee, but in vain; for well I knew,
  What perils youthful ardour would pursue: 
  That boiling blood would carry thee too far;
  Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war! 
  O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom
  Prelude of bloody fields, and fights to come[5].

Upon the beginning of the civil war, his natural chearfulness and vivacity was clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him.  After the resolution of the two houses not to admit any treaty of peace, those indispositions which had before touched him, grew into a habit of gloominess; and he who had been easy and affable to all men, became on a sudden less communicable, sad, and extremely affected with the spleen.  In his dress, to which he had formerly paid an attention, beyond what might have been expected from a man of so great abilities, and so much business, he became negligent and slovenly, and in his reception of suitors, so quick, sharp, and severe, that he was looked upon as proud and imperious.

When there was any hope of peace, his former spirit used to return and he appeared gay, and vigorous, and exceeding sollicitous to press any thing that might promote it; and Clarendon observes, “That after a deep silence, when he was sitting amongst his friends, he would with a shrill voice, and sad accent, repeat the words Peace!  Peace! and would passionately say, that the agony of the war, the ruin and bloodshed in which he saw the nation involved, took his sleep from him, and would soon break his heart.”

This extream uneasiness seems to have hurried him on to his destruction; for the morning before the battle of Newbery, he called for a clean shirt, and being asked the reason of it, answered, “That if he were slain in the battle, they should not find his body in foul linen.”  Being persuaded by his friends not to go into the fight, as being no military officer, “He said he was weary of the times, foresaw much misery to his country, and did believe he should be out of it e’re night.”  Putting himself therefore into the first rank of the Lord Byron’s regiment, he was shot with a musket in the lower part of his belly, on the 20th of September 1643, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till next morning.

Thus died in the bed of honour, the incomparable Lord Falkland, on whom all his contemporaries bestowed the most lavish encomiums, and very deservedly raised altars of praise to his memory.  Among all his panegyrists, Clarendon is the foremost, and of highest authority; and in his words therefore, I shall give his character to the reader.  “In this unhappy battle, (says he) was slain the Lord viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts, of learning and