[Footnote 1: Athen. Oxon. p. 46. vol. ii.] [Footnote 2: Wood, ubi supra.] * * * * * CARY LUCIUS, Lord Viscount FALKLAND, The son of Henry, lord viscount Falkland, was born at Burford in Oxfordshire, about the year 1610[1]. For some years he received his education in Ireland, where his father carried him when he was appointed Lord Deputy of that kingdom in 1622; he had his academical learning in Trinity College in Dublin, and in St. John's College, Cambridge. Clarendon relates, "that before he came to be twenty years of age, he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grandfather, without passing through his father or mother, who were both alive; shortly after that, and before he was of age, being in his inclination a great lover of the military life, he went into the low countries in order to procure a command, and to give himself up to it, but was diverted from it by the compleat inactivity of that summer." He returned to England, and applied himself to a severe course of study; first to polite literature and poetry, in which he made several successful attempts. In a very short time he became perfectly master of the Greek tongue; accurately read all the Greek historians, and before he was twenty three years of age, he had perused all the Greek and Latin Fathers. About the time of his father's death, in 1633, he was made one of the Gentlemen of his Majesty's Privy Chamber, notwithstanding which he frequently retired to Oxford, to enjoy the conversation of learned and ingenious men. In 1639 he was engaged in an expedition against the Scots, and though he received some disappointment in a command of a troop of horse, of which he had a promise, he went a volunteer with the earl of Essex[2]. In 1640 he was chosen a Member of the House of Commons, for Newport in the Isle of Wight, in the Parliament which began at Westminster the 13th of April in the same year, and from the debates, says Clarendon, which were managed with all imaginable gravity and sobriety, 'he contracted such a reverence for Parliaments, that he thought it absolutely impossible they ever could produce mischief or inconvenience to the nation, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of them, and from the unhappy, and unseasonable dissolution of the Parliament he harboured some prejudice to the court.' In 1641, John, lord Finch, Keeper of the Great Seal, was impeached by lord Falkland, in the name of the House of Commons, and his lordship, says Clarendon, 'managed that prosecution with great vigour and sharpness, as also against the earl of Strafford, contrary to his natural gentleness of temper, but in both these cases he was misled by the authority of those whom he believed understood the laws perfectly, of which he himself was utterly ignorant[3].'