and was on the King’s side; and undertook to get Wiltshire and Dorsetshire to declare for him:  But he was not able to effect it.  Yet Prince Maurice breaking articles to a town, that he had got to receive him, furnished him with an excuse to forsake that side, and to turn to the Parliament.  He had a wonderful faculty in speaking to a popular assembly, and could mix both the facetious and the serious way of arguing very agreeably.  He had a particular talent to make others trust to his judgment, and depend on it:  And he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art of governing parties, and of making himself the head of them.  He was as to religion a Deist at best:  He had the dotage of Astrology in him to a high degree:  He told me, that a Dutch doctor had from the stars foretold him the whole series of his life.  But that which was before him, when he told me this, proved false, if he told me true:  For he said, he was yet to be a greater man than he had been.  He fancied, that after death our souls lived in stars.  He had a general knowledge of the slighter parts of learning, but understood little to the bottom:  So he triumphed in a rambling way of talking, but argued slightly when he was held close to any point.  He had a wonderful faculty at opposing, and running things down; but had not the like force in building up.  He had such an extravagant vanity in setting himself out, that it was very disagreeable.  He pretended that Cromwell offered to make him King.  He was indeed of great use to him in withstanding the enthusiasts of that time.  He was one of those who press’d him most to accept of the Kingship, because, as he said afterwards, he was sure it would ruin him.  His strength lay in the knowledge of England, and of all the considerable men in it.  He understood well the size of their understandings, and their tempers:  And he knew how to apply himself to them so dextrously, that, tho’ by his changing sides so often it was very visible how little he was to be depended on, yet he was to the last much trusted by all the discontented party.  He was not ashamed to reckon up the many turns he had made:  And he valued himself on the doing it at the properest season, and in the best manner.  This he did with so much vanity, and so little discretion, that he lost many by it.  And his reputation was at last run so low, that he could not have held much longer, had he not died in good time, either for his family or for his party:  The former would have been ruined, if he had not saved it by betraying the latter.

69.

By DRYDEN.

  Some by their Friends, more by themselves thought wise,
  Oppos’d the Pow’r, to which they could not rise. 
  Some had in Courts been Great, and thrown from thence,
  Like Fiends, were harden’d in Impenitence. 
  Some, by their Monarch’s fatal mercy grown,
  From Pardon’d Rebels, Kinsmen to