hope ever to see it brought to perfection.  This excellent design was again set on foot, under the ministry of the earl of Oxford, and was again defeated by a conflict of parties, and the necessity of attending only to political disquisitions, for defending the conduct of the administration, and forming parties in the Parliament.  Since that time it has never been mentioned, either because it has been hitherto a sufficient objection, that it was one of the designs of the earl of Oxford, by whom Godolphin was defeated; or because the statesmen who succeeded him have not more leisure, and perhaps less taste for literary improvements.  Lord Roscommon’s attempts were frustrated by the commotions which were produced by King James’s endeavours to introduce alterations in religion.  He resolved to retire to Rome, alledging, ’it was best to sit next the chimney when the chamber smoaked.’

It will, no doubt, surprize many of the present age, and be a just cause of triumph to them, if they find that what Roscommon and Oxford attempted in vain, shall be carried into execution, in the most masterly manner, by a private gentleman, unassisted, and unpensioned.  The world has just reason to hope this from the publication of an English Dictionary, long expected, by Mr. Johnson; and no doubt a design of this sort, executed by such a genius, will be a lasting monument of the nation’s honour, and that writer’s merit.

Lord Roscommon’s intended retreat into Italy, already mentioned, on account of the troubles in James the IId’s reign, was prevented by the gout, of which he was so impatient, that he admitted a repellent application from a French empyric, by which his distemper was driven up into his bowels, and put an end to his life, in 1684.

Mr. Fenton has told us, that the moment in which he expired, he cried out with a voice, that expressed the most intense fervour of devotion,

  My God! my father, and my friend! 
  Do not forsake me, at my end.

Two lines of his own version of the hymn, Dies irae, Dies illa.

The same Mr. Fenton, in his notes upon Waller, has given Roscommon a character too general to be critically just.  ’In his writings, says he, we view the image of a mind, which was naturally serious and solid, richly furnished, and adorned with all the ornaments of art and science; and those ornaments unaffectedly disposed in the most regular and elegant order.  His imagination might have probably been fruitful and sprightly, if his judgment had been less severe; but that severity (delivered in a masculine, clear, succinct stile) contributed to make him so eminent in the didactical manner, that no man with justice can affirm he was ever equalled by any of our nation, without confessing at the same time, that he is inferior to none.  In some other kinds of writing his genius seems to have wanted fire to attain the point of perfection:  but who can attain it?’