says, that he died at his house in Yorkshire; but the circumstance of his sitting upon the cold ground, when warm with the chace, renders it highly proba ble that he was suddenly taken ill, and carried to his tenant's house, which might be an inn. Hence the pathetic reflexions on his death, contained in the following lines of Mr. Pope: “Behold, what blessings wealth to life can lend! In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, Of mimick'd statesmen, and their merry king: (Epistle on the Use of Riches, 297.)* The character of Buckingham may be collected from the accurate sketch of it drawn by the pencils Duncombe family, in whose possession the princely property still remains. * The following is a literal extract from the Register: "BURIALS. "1687, April 17th. Gorges vilaus, Lord dooke of bookingam." A Letter has been printed from the Earl of Arran, afterward Duke of Hamilton, saying that, passing through Kirby Moorside, he attended accidentally the Duke's last moments: that he of those great masters of descriptive poetry, Dryden and Pope; for, though the former was his professed enemy on account of the Rehearsal,' yet, upon a comparison of Zimri with Bishop Burnet's account of his Grace, the picture does not seem to be very greatly overcharged. "Some of their chiefs were princes of the land: A man so various, that he seem'd to be That every man with him was God or Devil. He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief For, spite of him, the weight of business fell Ón Absalom (Monmouth) and wise Achitophel (Shaftesbury). (Absalom and Achitophel.) died April 15, 1687, aged 60; and having no person to direct his funeral, and the Earl being obliged to pursue his journey, he engaged Gibson, Esq. (lineal ancestor of the Robinsons, His bitterest enemies, it has been observed, acknowledge him to have possessed great vivacity and singular powers of ridicule, but his warmest friends have never claimed for him the possession of a single virtue. His generosity was profuseness, his wit malevolence, his very talents caprice, and the gratification of his grossest and worst passions throughout life his single object. Of this, a striking instance is recorded, in his neglect of the distressed Butler. As a writer, however, he stands in a totally different point of view. There the poet surmounts the libertine. The Rehearsal' alone will preserve his memory, as long as language shall be understood, or true wit maintain it's claim to admiration. ever saw. "With regard to his person," says Verville, in his scarce work entitled Memoires de la Cour d'Angleterre," "he was one of the finest gentlemen that Europe His conversation was easy and charming, serious when occasion required it, but generally facetious and turning upon mirth: he had a genius, that fitted him for the highest posts of the state; but pleasure, which was his predominant passion, made him ridicule all manner of business, and as ill habits are not easily left off, this at long run made him incapable of it. So strange a neglect of himself and affairs exposed him to the villainy of the city-usurers, who cheated him of the greater part of his estate, and made an incredible advantage of his careless temper. In his lately residing at Welburn, an ancient mansion in that neighbourhood) to see him decently interred. As to the scene of his death, Pope may have been misinformed in some slight particulars. There is no tradition, that the house ever was an inn; and the unchanged deal floor of the chamber, in which Villiers expired, is still shown to the curious, younger days no nobleman of England had ventured more for the service of his prince, whom he had accompanied in the fatal battle of Worcester; as at the Restoration, and some years afterward, no man appeared with more warmth and zeal for the prerogative. In the latter part of his life, he altered his conduct, and was a vehement assertor of the privileges of parliament and the liberty of the subject. Whether this new change in him was owing to any real alteration of his sentiments, or whether it proceeded only from his being disgusted with the court, it is certain he suffered himself to run into the contrary extreme, and opposed the King in some junctures where he ought not to have appeared. This reflected severely upon his gratitude, no man having such personal obligations to the royal family as himself, since Charles I. ran the risk of disobliging his parliament, so fatal afterward to his affairs, rather than abandon his father to his enemies of the Lower House who were resolved to ruin him. But gratitude is too tender a plant, to flourish in the English climate. At his Majesty's return, the Duke found himself possessed of one of the most considerable estates in the kingdom, which he ruined by his profuse way of living; though his negligence and the vast confidence, he reposed in the integrity of his city-friends and servants, ruined it much more than his profuseness. Great as his fortune was, he affected a magnificence much above it what wonder is it then, when such insatiable drainers as buildings, music, chemistry, not to mention his amours that were sufficiently expensive to him, exhausted him at once, that his patrimony sensibly decayed. The most Christian King showed him higher respect than ever any foreign Embassador was known to receive; and as he knew him to be an homme de plaisir, he entertained him accordingly, when he came in the year 1677, to break the famous Triple League. Nothing could be so welcome to the court of Versailles, as the message he came about; for which reason a regale was prepared for him, that might have befitted the magnificence of the Roman Emperors, when Rome flourished in it's highest grandeur. What sits worst upon his character, and shows he took a delight not only to cross his master in his politic affairs, but even in his amours, it is observable, that if he could not enjoy his mistresses he would render them suspected, and at last get them discarded; a living testimony of which truth is the Duchess of Cleyeland. In short, having by his irregular conduct utterly ruined himself at court, and his prodigious debts making him uneasy to the city-harpies, he was forced to retire into Yorkshire, where he made an exit very unworthy of the great Duke of Buckingham, who if he had pleased, might have cut as brilliant a figure in history as any nobleman of this age." He had no children by his Duchess, so that in him the title, as connected with the family of Villiers, became extinct. It was, subsequently, transferred to that of Sheffield. 6 His dramatic pieces, beside The Rehearsal,' are The Chances,' a comedy altered from Fletcher, and still occasionally represented; The Restauration, or Right will take place,' a tragi-comedy; The Battle of Sedgemoor, a farce; and The Militant Couple; 6 |