for a Court.  He was very learned, not only in Latin, in which he was a master, but in Greek and Hebrew.  He had read a great deal of divinity, and almost all the historians ancient and modern:  So that he had great materials.  He had with these an extraordinary memory, and a copious but unpolished expression.  He was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham called him to me, of a blundering understanding.  He was haughty beyond expression, abject to those he saw he must stoop to, but imperious to all others.  He had a violence of passion that carried him often to fits like madness, in which he had no temper.  If he took a thing wrong, it was a vain thing to study to convince him:  That would rather provoke him to swear, he would never be of another mind:  He was to be let alone:  And perhaps he would have forgot what he had said, and come about of his own accord.  He was the coldest friend and the violentest enemy I ever knew:  I felt it too much not to know it.  He at first seemed to despise wealth:  But he delivered himself up afterwards to luxury and sensuality:  And by that means he ran into a vast expence, and stuck at nothing that was necessary to support it.  In his long imprisonment he had great impressions of religion on his mind:  But he wore these out so entirely, that scarce any trace of them was left.  His great experience in affairs, his ready compliance with every thing that he thought would please the King, and his bold offering at the most desperate counsels, gained him such an interest in the King, that no attempt against him nor complaint of him could ever shake it, till a decay of strength and understanding forced him to let go his hold.  He was in his principles much against Popery and arbitrary government:  And yet by a fatal train of passions and interests he made way for the former, and had almost established the latter.  And, whereas some by a smooth deportment made the first beginnings of tyranny less discernible and unacceptable, he by the fury of his behaviour heightned the severity of his ministry, which was liker the cruelty of an inquisition than the legality of justice.  With all this he was a Presbyterian, and retained his aversion to King Charles I. and his party to his death.

68.

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, created Earl of Shaftesbury 1662.

Born 1621.  Died 1683.

By BURNET.

The man that was in the greatest credit with the Earl of Southampton was Sir Anthony Ashly Cooper, who had married his niece, and became afterwards so considerable that he was raised to be Earl of Shaftsbury.  And since he came to have so great a name, and that I knew him for many years in a very particular manner, I will dwell a little longer on his character; for it was of a very extraordinary composition.  He began to make a considerable figure very early.  Before he was twenty he came into the House of Commons,