Normanby, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham. He died in 1720, at Buckingham House in St James’s Park, an edifice which he had erected himself, leaving a son by his third wife, a natural daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory, bearing an inscription of his own composition, beginning; “In doubt, but not in wickedness, I lived. In doubt, but not in fear, I die.” He wrote the “Vision,” and other poems; two tragedies, called “Julius Cæsar” and “Brutus,” and several prose works, consisting chiefly of historical memoirs, speeches in parliament, characters, dialogues, and essays. As a poet, he scarcely exceeds mediocrity; though Pope and others were sufficiently influenced by his rank and patronage, to place him high among the votaries of the muse. Johnson’s criticism is severe. “He is,” says he, “a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, feebly laborious, and at best but pretty. His songs are upon common topics; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas; to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power. His verses are often insipid, but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet.” ----- Footnote 103: Dryden’s _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i. Notes, p. 60, 1760. ----- The same authority describes his character somewhat harshly. He writes:—“His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes, and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments, with respect to women, he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles, concerning property, were such as a gaming table supplies. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologise for his violences of passion.” Such, then, was the man who obtained for Samuel Wesley the living of South Ormsby, and in whose house Samuel Wesley acted as domestic chaplain. The year in which he asked that Wesley might be made an Irish bishop, was the year in which he himself was created Marquis of Normanby. Had his request been preferred to King James, or to Queen Anne, it would probably have been successful, but with King William and Queen Mary he was no favourite. The Marquis of Normanby was a distinguished man, but his principles and morality were loose, and Samuel Wesley’s position, as domestic chaplain, was not always the most comfortable. There can be little doubt that the following question and answer in the _Athenian Oracle_, (vol. i. p. 542,) were written by Wesley, and refer to his own office in the family of the marquis:—