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it, are related by Grammont, who states that though the public was at first shocked by the duel, and the Queen exclaimed against so notorious and scandalous a crime, endeavouring to raise up the serious part of the nation and the politicians against it, no person paid any attention to the case, and the licentiousness of the age went on uncontrolled. At that time the seconds in duels, as well as the principals, fought. Captain Holmes and Mr. Jenkins were the Duke's seconds; Sir John Talbot and Bernard Howard were the Earl of Shrewsbury's. Talbot was severely wounded, and Jenkins killed upon the spot. The King had heard of the intended challenge some time before, and, according to Pepys, "did give it to my Lord General [the Duke of Albemarle] to confine the Duke, or to take security that he should not do any such thing as fight; and the General trusted to the King that he, sending for him, would do it; and the King trusted to the General." The same invaluable chronicler informs us, in his diary of May 15th, 1668, that Buckingham took Lady Shrewsbury to his house, “where his Duchess, [the daughter of Fairfax,] saying that it was not for her and the other to live together in a house, he answered, 'Why, madam, I did think so, and therefore have ordered your coach to be ready to carry you to your father's;' which was a devilish speech, but, they say, true." Buckingham and Lady Shrewsbury lived together for some years, but their extravagance led to an applica. tion to Parliament to preserve the Shrewsbury estate for the young Earl, son of the Countess, and the control of the property was placed in other hands. At the same time the guilty pair were prohibited, under a penalty of 10,000l., from living together. The Countess found a second husband of good family, Mr. Brydges, second son of Sir Thomas Brydges, of Keynsham, in Somersetshire. They lived at Avington, near Winchester, in a fine mansion, wherein they often entertained Charles II.; and the Countess survived till 1702.

The public life of Villiers must be read in the history of his country. Walpole has sketched the outlines of his character in his brilliant antithetic style. "When this extraordinary man, with the figure and genius of Alcibiades, could equally charm the Presbyterian Fairfax and the dissolute Charles; when he alike ridiculed that witty King and his solemn Chancellor; when he plotted the ruin of his country with a cabal of bad ministers; or, equally unprincipled, supported its cause with bad patriots-one laments that such parts should have been devoid of every virtue. But when Alcibiades turns chemist, when he is a real bubble and a visionary miser, when ambition is but a frolic, when the worst designs are for the foolishest ends, contempt extinguishes all reflections on his character. The portrait of this Duke has been drawn by four masterly hands. Burnet has hewn it with a rough chisel; Count Hamilton touched it with that slight delicacy, that finishes while it seems to sketch; Dryden catched the living likeness; Pope completed the historical resemblance. Yet the abilities of this lord appear in no instance more amazing than that, being exposed by two of the greatest poets, he has exposed one of them ten times more severely. Zimri is an admirable portrait, but Bayes an original creation. Dryden satirised Buckingham, but Villiers made Dryden satirise himself."

The desire to be witty and pointed has here, as on other occasions, led

Walpole too far. The Rehearsal, in point of real talent, cannot be named in comparison with the satires of Dryden or Pope. It is a happy caricature of the personal peculiarities of Dryden, and a clever travesty of the most bombastic passages in the rhyming tragedies of the day. There is dramatic talent in the piece, but neither vigour of thought nor originality—no true poetic power. Besides, how much of it is really Buckingham's? Butler, author of Hudibras, Bishop Sprat (then Buckingham's chaplain), and Martin Clifford, afterwards Master of the Chapter-House, were all concerned in its composition. Buckingham, we are willing to believe, suggested some of the ludicrous images and comparisons, and gave the drama that tone which rendered it so well adapted to amuse the higher circles; but he must always, as an author, have been an inferior partner in a company of which Butler was one.

The Villiers mansion, at Cliveden, became the property of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and there, in 1744, was acted the Masque of Alfred, containing the national anthem of Rule Britannia. Thomson and Mallet, authors of the Masque, were frequent visitors at Cliveden, and it was long the scene of courtly splendour and magnificence. In 1795, this palace was accidentally destroyed by fire, "and nothing of its elegant furniture preserved from the flames, but the fine tapestry that represented the Duke of Marlborough's victories." A villa was afterwards erected on the spot, which met with the same fate in 1850. The Duke of Sutherland, to whom Cliveden now belongs, has rebuilt the mansion, in a chaste and beautiful style, and the woods and pleasure-grounds "reflected in the Thames' translucent wave are the favourite resort of summer-wanderers.

SIR JOHN CUTLER.

Ver. 315. Sage Cutler.] Most readers will recollect the admirable passage in Arbuthnot's Memoirs of Scriblerus, relative to this City Knight, a passage which was intended to ridicule Locke's theory of personal identity :

"Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk, that they becam at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings, both before and after the darning; and this sensation would have continued in them, through all the succession of darnings: and yet, after the last of all, there was not perhaps one thread left of the first pair of stockings, but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was said before."

Sir John was a loyalist in the time of the Commonwealth, and, at the Restoration, he was created a Baronet by Charles II. He belonged to the Grocers' Company, towards which he was a liberal benefactor, and he was at the expense of building the north gallery of his parish church, St. Margaret's, Westminster. He contributed a large sum towards the building

of the College of Physicians, in Warwick Lane, Newgate Street, in return for which, a statue of the Knight, along with another of the King, was erected in the College Court. Sir John died in 1699, and his executors claimed of the College £7000, the sum which Sir John had advanced, with interest, it appearing to be charged as a debt in the books of the deceased. A compromise was made by the executors accepting of £2000, as payment in full of all demands. The "faculty of Warwick Lane," as Garth called his brethren, were enraged at this shabby transaction, and obliterated the name of Sir John inscribed on the pedestal of his statue. The City Knight, however, has received a more enduring monument from the hand of Pope, though there is great exaggeration in the sketch. The poet alludes to the "only daughter" of Sir John. Some accounts represent him as having had two daughters-Elizabeth, his heir, married to the Earl of Radnor, and another to Sir William Portman, Bart. It is said that no less than £7,666 was expended on the funeral of this famous miser.

"Honours by the heralds duly paid

In mode and form, e'en to a very scruple;

Oh cruel irony! these come too late,

And only mock whom they were meant to honour."

EPISTLE IV.

ΤΟ

RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON.

ARGUMENT.

OF THE USE OF RICHES.

The vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality. The abuse of the word taste, ver. 13. That the first principle and foundation in this, as in everything else, is good sense, ver. 39. The chief proof of it is to follow Nature, even in works of mere luxury and elegance. Instanced in architecture and gardening, where all must be adapted to the genius and use of the place, and the beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it, ver. 47. How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings, for want of this true foundation, without which nothing can please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will be but perverted into something burdensome or ridiculous, ver. 65, &c. to 98. A description of the false taste of magnificence; the first grand error of which is to imagine that greatness consists in the size and dimensions, instead of the proportion and harmony of the whole, ver. 99; and the second, either in joining together parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the repetition of the same too frequently, ver. 105, &c. A word or two of false taste in books, in music, in painting, even in preaching and prayer, and lastly in entertainments, ver. 133, &c. Yet Providence is justified in giving wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is dispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind, ver. 169 [recurring to what is laid down in the Essay on Man, Epist. II., and in the epistle preceding, ver. 159, &c.] What are the proper objects of magnificence, and a proper field for the expense of great men, ver. 177, &c.; and finally, the great and public works which become a prince, ver. 191 to the end.

IS strange, the miser should his cares employ

"TIS

To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:

Is it less strange, the prodigal should waste
His wealth, to purchase what he ne'er can taste?
Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats;
Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats:

5

He buys for Topham 1 drawings and designs,
For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins; 2
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.3
Think we all these are for himself? no more
Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore.

For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
Only to show how many tastes he wanted.
What brought Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste?
Some demon whisper'd, "Visto! have a taste.”
Heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool,
And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.1

1 A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings.

10

15

2 [Thomas, eighth Earl of Pembroke, collected the statues and medals at Wilton, the magnificent seat of the family. His successor, Earl Henry, added materially to the decoration of the mansion. Dr. Mead's books, alluded to by the poet, consisted of about 10,000 volumes, which, with his valuable collection of medals and paintings, were sold by auction after his death in 1754. Sir Hans Sloane's collection was fortunately preserved. He bequeathed his books, medals, objects of natural history, and manuscripts to the public, on condition that the sum of £20,000 should be paid to his executors, being not a fifth of their value. The terms were agreed to; the manuscripts of the Earl of Oxford (called the Harleian library) were added to the Sloane Museum, and thus the great British Museum was commenced. Sir Hans died in 1752.]

3 Two eminent physicians; the one had an excellent library, the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity.

[Originally "rarities for Sloane." In the Comedian, or Philosophical Inquirer, 1732, edited by Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, in a letter addressed to Pope, commenting on the unmeaning generality of the term "rarities," it is asked, "Are not some drawings, some statues, some coins, all monkish manuscripts, and some books, rarities? Could'st thou not find a trisyllable to express some parts of nature for a collection of which that learned and worthy physician is eminent? Fy, fy! correct and write

'Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,

And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.'" The correction was evidently an improvement, and Pope, therefore, wisely accepted the benefit.-Communication by Mr. Crossley, in Notes and Queries, June 4, 1853.]

This man was a carpenter, employed by a first minister, who raised him to an architect, without any genius in the art: and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him Comptroller of the Board of Works. [Ripley was the architect of Houghton, the splendid residence of

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