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HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

chap.

XXIII.

101 ) 7 .

loved books, and was bent on forming tlie most magnificentprivate library in England. While other heirs of noblehouses were inspecting patterns of steinkirks and swordknots, dangling after actresses, or betting on fightingcocks, he was in pursuit of the Mentz editions of Tully’sOffices, of the Parmesan Statius, and of the inestimableVirgil of Zarottus. * It was natural that high expectationsshould be formed of the virtue and wisdom of a youthwhose very luxury and prodigality had a grave and eruditeair, and that even discerning men should be unable todetect the vices which were hidden under that show ofpremature sobriety.

Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party,which, before the unhonoured and unlamented close of hislife, was more than once brought to the verge of ruin byhis violent temper and his crooked politics. His Whiggismdiffered widely from that of his father. It was not alanguid, speculative, preference of one theory of govern-ment to another, but a fierce and dominant passion. Un-fortunately , though an ardent, it was at the same time acorrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrowand oligarchical as to be little, if at all, preferable to theworst forms of Toryism. The young lord’s imagination

* Evelyn saw the Mentz edition of the Offices among Lord Spen-cer’s books in April, 1G99. Markland, in his preface to the Sylvie ofStatius, acknowledges his obligations to tho very rare Parmesanedition in Lord Spencer’s collection. As to the Virgil of Zarottus,which his Lordship bought for 46/., see the extracts from parley’sDiary, in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, i. 90.