454 CENTLIVRE was founded on the best motives, but declined at that time any explication on the project, which soon became unequivocal. Lord Charlemont exulted in the first victory over the ministers in the first session, although he did not rely on it as quite decisive; but henceforward his health more rapidly declined. He was the continued victim of disease; and bis valuable life, though obviously verging to its close, was occupied to the last in efforts for his country. Not quite eighteen years had now elapsed since he had triumphed in establishing the constitutional independence of his country. That independence which he bad cherished in its cradle, he now feared he must shortly follow to its grave, for its existence hung, like his own, by a feeble thread. His vital powers hourly decayed His appetite ceased; his limbs swelled ; and it was evi- dent to his friends, whose visits he received as long as his disorder would permit, that his dissolution was fast ap- proaching. He did not live to see the completion of the measure he so much deprecated; the hand of death pre- vented him that anguish, On the 4th of August, 1799, he expired, at Charlemont House, Dublin, in the seventieth year of his age; and his remains were conveyed to his family vault, in the ancient cathedral of Armagh. Thus terminated the existence of one of the best men and truest patriots that ever adorned any country; be- queathing to his posterity an illustrious example for their imitation, and to his native land the memory of his virtues as an imperishable monument. SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE, A DRAMATIc writer of great and deserved celebrity, is asserted by some of her biographers to have been born in Lincolnshire; but it being infinitely more probable, from the following circumstances, that she drew her first breath " in the Isle of Erin, we have taken the liberty of admit- ting her into this work. She was the daughter of a Mr. Freeman, a gentleman
