The same year also his Tragedy, intitled Heroic Love, was acted at the Theatre.  Mr. Gildon observes, ’that this Tragedy is written after the manner of the antients, which is much more natural and easy, than that of our modern Dramatists.’  Though we cannot agree with Mr. Gildon, that the antient model of Tragedy is so natural as the modern; yet this piece shall have very great merit, since we find Mr. Dryden addressing verses to the author upon this occasion, which begin thus,

  Auspicious poet, wert thou not my friend,
  How could I envy, what I must commend! 
  But since ’tis nature’s law, in love and wit,
  That youth should reign, and with’ring age submit,
  With less regret, those laurels I resign,
  Which dying on my brow, revive on thine.

Our author wrote also a dramatic poem, called the British Enchanters[D], in the preface to which he observes, ’that it is the first Essay of a very infant Muse, rather as a task at such hours as were free from other exercises, than any way meant for public entertainment.  But Mr. Betterton having had a casual sight of it, many years after it was written, begged it for the stage, where it met with so favourable a reception as to have an uninterrupted run of upwards of forty nights.  To this Mr. Addison wrote the Epilogue.’  Lord Lansdowne altered Shakespear’s Merchant of Venice, under the title of the Jew of Venice, which was acted with applause, the profits of which were designed for Mr. Dryden, but upon that poet’s death were given to his son.

In 1702 he translated into English the second Olynthian of Demosthpracticewas returned member for the county of Cornwall, in the parliament which met in November 1710, and was soon after made secretary of war, next comptroller of the houshold, and then treasurer, and sworn one of the privy council.  The year following he was created baron Lansdowne of Biddeford in Devonshire[E].

In 1719 he made a speech in the house of lords against the practicee of occasional conformity, which is printed among his works, and among other things, he says this.  ’I always understood the toleration to be meant as an indulgence to tender consciences, not a licence for hardened ones; and that the act to prevent occasional conformity was designed only to correct a particular crime of particular men, in which no sect of dissenters was included, but these followers of Judas, which came to the Lord’s-Supper, from no other end but to sell, and betray him.  This crime however palliated and defended, by so many right reverend fathers in the church, is no less than making the God of truth, as it were in person subservient to acts of hypocrisy; no less than sacrificing the mystical Blood and Body of our Saviour to worldly and sinister purposes, an impiety of the highest nature! which in justice called for protection, and in charity for prevention.  The bare receiving the holy Eucharist, could never be intended simply as a qualification for an office, but as an open declaration, an undubitable proof of being, and remaining a sincere member of the church.  Whoever presumes to receive it with any other view profanes it; and may be said to seek his promotion in this world, by eating and drinking his own damnation in the next.’