There was in the whole race an eccentricity which
bordered on the ridiculous, but did not imply want of sense or of
talent. Indeed this third species, 'the Herveys,' were more gifted than
the generality of 'men and women.' The father of Lord Hervey had been a
country gentleman of good fortune, living at Ickworth, near Bury in
Suffolk, and representing the town in parliament, as his father had
before him, until raised to the peerage. Before that elevation he had
lived on in his own county, uniting the character of the English squire,
in that fox-hunting county, with that of a perfect gentleman, a scholar,
and a most admirable member of society. He was a poet, also, affecting
the style of Cowley, who wrote an elegy upon his uncle, William Hervey,
an elegy compared to Milton's 'Lycidas' in imagery, music, and
tenderness of thought. The shade of Cowley, whom Charles II. pronounced,
at his death, to be 'the best man in England,' haunted this peer, the
first Earl of Bristol. He aspired especially to the poet's _wit_; and
the ambition to be a wit flew like wildfire among his family, especially
infecting his two sons, Carr, the elder brother of the subject of this
memoir, and Lord Hervey.
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