Though the duke of Lauderdale had ordered our author to be educated as his heir, yet he left all his personal estate, which was very great, to another, the young nobleman having, by some means, disobliged him; and as he was of an ungovernable implacable temper, could never again recover his favour[1].  Though the earl of Lauderdale was thus removed from his places by the court, yet he persisted in his loyalty to the Royal Family, and, upon the revolution, followed the fortune of King James II, and some years after died in France, leaving no surviving issue, so that the titles devolved on his younger brother.

While the earl was in exile with his Royal master, he applied his mind to the delights of poetry, and, in his leisure hours, compleated a translation of Virgil’s works.  Mr. Dryden, in his dedication of the Aeneis, thus mentions it; ’The late earl of Lauderdale, says he, sent me over his new translation of the Aeneis, which he had ended before I engaged in the same design.  Neither did I then intend it, but some proposals being afterwards made me by my Bookseller, I desired his lordship’s leave that I might accept them, which he freely granted, and I have his letter to shew for that permission.  He resolved to have printed his work, which he might have done two years before I could have published mine; and had performed it, if death had not prevented him.  But having his manuscript in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author’s sense; for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman.  His friends have yet another, and more correct copy of that translation by them, which if they had pleased to have given the public, the judges might have been convinced that I have not flattered him.’

Lord Lauderdale’s friends, some years after the publication of Dryden’s Translation, permitted his lordship’s to be printed, and, in the late editions of that performance, those lines are marked with inverted commas, which Dryden thought proper to adopt into his version, which are not many; and however closely his lordship may have rendered Virgil, no man can conceive a high opinion of that poet, contemplated through the medium of his Translation.

Dr. Trapp, in his preface to the Aeneis, observes, ’that his lordship’s Translation is pretty near to the original, though not so close as its brevity would make one imagine; and it sufficiently appears, that he had a right taste in poetry in general, and the Aeneid in particular.  He shews a true spirit, and, in many places, is very beautiful.  But we should certainly have seen Virgil far better translated, by a noble hand, had the earl of Lauderdale been the earl of Roscommon, and had the Scottish peer followed all the precepts, and been animated with the genius of the Irish.’

We know of no other poetical compositions of this learned nobleman, and the idea we have received from history of his character, is, that he was in every respect the reverse of his uncle, from whence we may reasonably conclude, that he possessed many virtues, since few statesmen of any age ever were tainted with more vices than the duke of Lauderdale.