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So over violent, or over civil,

That every man with him was god or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate:

He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief:
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel :
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.'
Absalom and Achitophel.

Pope describes the last scene of this nobleman's life in these lines:

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half
hung,

The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-ty'd curtains, never meant to draw;
The George and Garter dangling from that bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies:-alas! how chang'd from
him,

That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!

Gallant and gay, in Clievedon's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay, at council, in a ring

Of mimic'd statesmen, and their merry king. No wit to flatter, left of all his store!

No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.' Moral Essays, Epist. 3. 1.229.

He died 16th April, 1688, at the house of a tenant at Kirby Moor Side, near Helmsly in Yorkshire, aged 61 years, and was buried in Westminster abbey.

Though this note is already long, the reader will hardly complain at an extension of it, by the addition of one more character of this licentious nobleman, written by the able pen of the author of Hudibras: THE DUKE OF BUCKS is one that has studied the whole body of vice. His parts are disproportionate to the whole, and, like a monster, he has more of some, and less of others than he should have. He has pulled down all that nature raised in him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He has

dammed up all those lights that nature made into the noblest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind loop-holes backward, by turning day into night, and night into day. His appetite to his pleasures is diseased and crazy, like the pica in a woman, that longs to eat that, which was never made for food, or a girl in the green sickness, that eats chalk and mortar. Perpetual surfeits of pleasure have filled his mind with bad and vicious humours (as well as his body with a nursery of diseases), which makes him affect new and extravagant ways, as being sick and tired with the old. Continual wine, women, and music, put false values upon things, which by custom become habitual, and debauch his understanding so, that he retains no right notion, nor sense of things. And as the same dose of the same physic has no operation on those that are much used to it; so his pleasures require a larger proportion of excess, and variety to render him sensible of them. He rises, eats, and goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others that go by the

new style; and keeps the same hours with owls and the antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartar customs, and never eats till the great Cham, having dined, makes proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that walks all night to disturb the family, and never appears by day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark; and as blind men are led by their dogs, so is he governed by some mean servant or other, that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things very freely that come and go; but, like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to every particular humour while it lasts, and afterwards vanish. Thus with St. Paul, though in a different

sense, he dies daily, and only lives in the night. He deforms nature, while he intends to adorn her, like Indians that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpetually drilled with a fiddlestick. He endures pleasures with less patience than other men do their pains.' Butler's Posthumous Works, Vol. II. p. 72.

P. 49. Lord Arlington.] Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, principal secretary of state, and lord chamberlain to king Charles II. A nobleman whose practices during that reign, have not left his character free from reproach. Mr. Macpherson says of him, that he supplied the place of extensive talents by an artful management of such as he possessed. Accommodating in his principles, and easy in his address, he pleased when he was known to deceive; and his manner acquired to him a kind of influence where he commanded no respect. He was little calculated for bold measures, on account of his natural timidity; and that defect created an opinion of his moderation, that was ascribed to virtue. His facility to

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