This can only have been the deepest duplicity; scarcely was the King restored to his throne, ere Buckingham was the leader in frolics of all sorts, and the more licentious and the more irreligious they were, the better did they seem suited to his inclinations and adapted to his talents. It is unnecessary to pursue in detail the career of one so well known as this nobleman. He was not distinguished by folly and licentiousness alone; he was a traitor to his king; a faithless husband to his wife, whom he insulted by taking to her presence, to her very home, a titled profligate (the Countess of Shrewsbury), whose husband he had slain in a duel. It was in vain that the nation cried shame! his wit, his humour, his high talents, his admirable drollery, rendered him paramount with the King, to whose pleasures he was so important. The Monarch was angered at times, but the disgrace of the favourite was always short-lived, and his power over the King's risible faculties, and consequently over him, quickly resumed. Add to this, that his social talents rendered him a general favourite with the profligates of the Court, and with none was he more so than with the imperious Lady Castlemaine; and his elegance, wit, and magnificence too often blinded his worthier intimates to his depravity.

The character Zimri, in Dryden's celebrated poem of Absalom and Achitophel, was sketched for Buckingham, and portrays him minutely and accurately

"Some of their chiefs were princes of the land:
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was ev'rything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon:
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that dy'd in thinking.
Blest madman! who could ev'ry hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both (to shew his judgment) in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,

That ev'ry man, with him, was god or devil;
In squand'ring 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."

On the death of Charles, Buckingham retired from Court to live on the remnant of his once magnificent estates. He was little more heard of, and in 1687 he died at the house of one of his tenants," a little alehouse," most accounts say, of

"Absalom," the Duke of Monmouth.

Earl of Shaftesbury.

"Achitophel," the

+ Such is the general belief. Miss Berry says it was "the comfortable house of an agent:" if so, the "worst inn's worst room," is merely poetical licence.

a fever caused by cold after hunting. It is not improbable, that his course of life had so enfeebled his constitution as to render him incapable of struggling with an attack of illness. Pope's lines on him are probably familiar to all our readers: --

"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-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 chang'd from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay at council, in a ring

Of mimic 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."

Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, is known as but another name for the extremity of licentiousness, debauchery, and vice. At eighteen years of age he entered the Court of Charles endowed with graceful manners, handsome person, infinite ready wit, and considerable mental acquirements. His companionable qualities were his ruin: he became at once the very type and exemplar of debauchery. Even the tolerant and participating Charles was compelled frequently to banish him from the Court. He died at little more than thirty -a sincere penitentutterly debilitated and worn out by debauchery,

VOL. I.