SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ACCOUNT OF HIM.

So very 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, or wise Achitophel;
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left."

363

"This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who ever lived, an estate of 20,000l. a year, to be squandered in every wild scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the situation of President of the North. he was suspected of having favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation to the Popish plot; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distinguished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire; which we may believe was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes in the "Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the infamous part of his character is touched upon; and the unprincipled libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of caressing her before he changed the bloody clothes in which he had murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spendthrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the following sober historical account.

""The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an infinite deal of wit and humour; but wanted judgment, and had no virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond measure, and implacable in his resentments; these qualities were the effects or different faces of his pride; which, whenever he pleased to lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule; but, by his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, 364

DEATH OF VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: running into the wildest extravagances and pushing his debaucheries to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject had at that time in England; yet his profuseness made him always necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, and proud without magnanimity; and though he did not want some bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor anything so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking."

"Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "was as awful a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost both the means of procuring and the power of enjoying the pleasures to which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of ambition into the last degree of contempt and disregard.". His dying scene, in a paltry inn, in Yorkshire, has been immortalized by Pope's beautiful lines:

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung;
The floors of plaister and the walls of dung;
On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-tied 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 changed from him!
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ;
Gallant and gay in Cliefden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay at council, in a ring
Of mimicked statesmen and a 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!"*

"The worst inn's worst room," however, is a poetical fiction. Buckingham died at the house of one of his tenants at Kirby Mallory, where he was overtaken with illness. He had wasted his fortune to a comparitive nothing; but was not reduced to such necessity as the poet would imply.†

Andrew Marvel makes the statue of Charing Cross the speaker in one of his witty libels on Charles and his brother. There was an equestrian statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch, the horse of which is made to hold a dialogue with this other. The poet fancies that the riders, "weary of sitting all day,"

* Scott's Edition of "Dryden," vol. ix., p. 270.

† See the life of him by his retainer Fairfax, and the account of him on his deathbed in the "Collection of Letters of several Persons of Quality and others."

MARVEL'S SATIRE ON THE STUARTS.

365

stole off one evening, and the two horses came together. The readers at Will's must have been a little astonished at the boldness of such passages as the following :

"Quoth the marble horse, It would make a stone speak,
To see a Lord Mayor and a Lombard Street beak,
Thy founder and mine, to cheat one another,
When both knaves agreed to be each other's brother.
Here Charing broke forth, and thus he went on-
My brass is provoked as much as thy stone
To see church and state bow down to a

And the King's chief ministers holding the door,
The money of widows and orphans employed,
And the bankers quite broke to maintain the 's pride.
WOOLCHURCH. To see Dei Gratia writ on the throne.

And the King's wicked life says God there is none.

CHARING. That he should be styled Defender of the Faith, Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith.

WOOLCHURCH. That the Duke should turn Papist, and that church

defy,

For which his own father a Martyr did die.
CHARING. Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil,
Not to think his own father has gone to the Devil.

CHARING. Pause, brother, awhile, and calmly consider

What thou hast to say against my royal rider.

*

WOOLCHURCH. Thy priest-ridden King turned desperate fighter
For the surplice, lawn-sleeves, the cross, and the mitre;
Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the lurch,
By knaves, who cried themselves up for the church,
Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans.

CHARING. Thy King will ne'er fight unless for his Queens.
WOOLCHURCH. He that dys for ceremonys, dys like a fool.
CHARING. The King on thy back is a lamentable tool.
WOOLCHURCH. The goat and the lion I equally hate,

And freemen alike value life and estate:

Tho' the father and son be different rods,

Between the two scourgers we find little odds;
Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes,
This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our throats.

*

What is thy opinion of James Duke of York?

*

CHARING. The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork.
With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his heart,
Father Patrick's disciples will make England smart.
If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom,

We must all to a stake, or be converts to Rome.
Ah! Tudor, ah! Tudor, of Stuarts enough;
None ever reigned like old Bess in the ruff.

*.

*

*

*

WOOLCHURCH. But canst thou devise when things will be mendedi
CHARING. When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended."

And these very lampoons had a hand in ending them.

366

LOCKET'S ORDINARY.

In the days of Buckingham there was a famous house of entertainment in Charing Cross, called Locket's Ordinary. Where it exactly stood seems to be no longer known: we. suspect by the great Northumberland Coffee-house. "It is often mentioned," says a manuscript in Birch's collection, "in the plays of Cibber, Vanbrugh, &c., where the scene sometimes is laid." It was much frequented by Sir George Etherege, as appears from the following anecdotes, picked up at the British Museum. Sir George Etherege and his company, "provoked by something amiss in the entertainment or attendance, got into a violent passion and abused the waiters. This brought in Mrs. Locket: 'We are so provoked,' said Sir George, 'that even I could find in my heart to pull the nosegay out of your bosom, and throw the flowers in your face.' This turned all their anger into jest."

"Sir G. Etherege discontinued Locket's Ordinary, having run up a score which he could not conveniently discharge. Mrs. Locket sent one to dun him, and to threaten him with a prosecution. He bid the messenger tell her that he would kiss her if she stirred a step in it. When this answer was brought back, she called for her hood and scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that 'she'd see if there was any fellow alive who had the impudence.' 'Pr'ythee, my dear, don't be so rash,' said her husband, 'you don't know what a man may do in his passion.' "*

The site of the tavern is now also unknown, where Prior was found, when a boy, reading Horace. It was called the Rummer. Mr. Nichols has found that, in the year 1685, it was kept by "Samuel Prior," and that the "annual feasts of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin" were held there, October 14, in that year. "Prior," says Johnson, "is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well educated in literature, to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education." †

* MSS. Birch, 4221, quoted in the Notes of the Tatler, ut supra, vol. i., p. 208.

† Life of Prior in the "Lives of the Poets."

PRIOR, AND HIS UNCLE'S TAVERN.

367

It is doubtful, however, from one of Prior's epistles to

Fleetwood Shepherd. whether the poet was more indebted to the Lord Dorset or to that gentleman for his first advancement in life, though the Earl finally became his great patron. He says to Shepherd,

"Now, as you took me up when little
Gave me my learning and my vittle,
Asked for me, from my lord, things fitting
Kind, as I'ad been your own begetting,
Confirm what formerly you've given,
Nor leave me now at six and seven,
As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen."

And again :

"My uncle, rest his soul! when living,
Might have contrived me ways of thriving;
Taught me with cider to replenish
My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish;

So, when for hock I drew pricked white-wine,
Swear 't had the flavour, and was right-wine;

Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni-
Val's Inn, to some good rogue attorney;
Where now, by forging deeds and cheating,
I'ad found some handsome ways of getting.
All this you made me quit to follow
That sneaking, whey-fac'd god Apollo;
Sent me among a fiddling crew
Of folks, I'ad never seen nor knew,
Calliope, and God knows who.
I add no more invectives to it,
You spoiled the youth to make a poet."

Johnson says "A survey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well when he read Horace at his uncle's; 'the vessel long retains the scent which it first receives.' In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler subjects, when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflection, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a poet." It is doubtful whether the general colour of everybody's life and character might not be found in that of his childhood; but there is no more reason to think that Prior's tavern propensities were owing to early habit than those of his patrician companions. No man was fonder of his bottle than Lord Dorset, and of low company than many a lord has been. According to Burke, who was a king's man, kings are naturally fond of low company. Yet they are no nephews of