Lord OXFORD’S private life was not less chequered by rapid alternations of sunshine and of gloom than was his political career. In August, 1713, he gratified a cherished desire by the marriage of his son Edward, Lord HARLEY, with the Lady Henrietta CAVENDISH HOLLES, daughter and heiress of John, Duke of NEWCASTLE (who died in 1711). With what Lord HARLEY had already derived under the Duke’s will, this marriage brought him an estate then worth sixteen thousand pounds a year, and destined to increase enormously in value. Three months afterwards the Earl lost a dearly loved daughter, the Marchioness of CAERMARTHEN, who died at the age of twenty-eight. It was of her that SWIFT wrote to him—‘I have sat down to think of every amiable quality that could enter into the composition of a lady, and could not single out one which she did not possess in as high a perfection as human nature is capable of. But as to your Lordship’s own particular, as it is an unconceivable misfortune to have lost such a daughter, so it is a possession which few can boast of to have had such a daughter. I have often said to your Lordship that “I never knew any one by many degrees so happy in their domestics as you;” and I affirm that you are so still, though not by so many degrees.... [Sidenote: Swift to Oxford; 21 Nov., 1713. (_Works_, vol. xvi, pp. 78–80.)] You began to be too happy for a mortal; much more happy than is usual with the dispensations of Providence long to continue.’ Under the sorrows both of public and of private life it was his wont to find a part of his habitual consolations in the use, as well as in the increase, of his splendid library. [Sidenote: HISTORY OF THE HARLEIAN LIBRARY.] He began the work of collection in youth, and to add to his treasures was one of the matters which, at intervals, occupied his latest thoughts. Among the famous Englishmen whose manuscripts passed, either wholly or partially, into the Harleian Library are to be counted Sir Thomas SMITH; John FOX, the martyrologist; John STOWE, the historian; Edward, Lord HERBERT of Cherbury; and Archbishop SANCROFT. Among famous foreigners, Augustus LOMENIE DE BRIENNE; Peter SÉGUIER, Chancellor of France; and Gerard John VOSSIUS. Perhaps the most extensive of the prior collections which it had absorbed, in mass, was the assemblage of manuscripts that had been gathered by Sir Symonds D’EWES, whose acquisitions included a rich series of the materials of English history.