PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

xvii

Rochester's latest days were almost hallowed by his penitence. Chesterfield is saved by his kindness to the Irish, and his affection for his son. Horace Walpole had human affections, though a most inhuman pen: and Wharton was famous for his good-humour.

The periods most abounding in the Wit and the Beau have, of course, been those most exempt from wars, and rumours of wars. The Restoration; the early period of the Augustan age; the commencement of the Hanoverian dynasty,-have all been enlivened by Wits and Beaux, who came to light like mushrooms after a storm of rain, as soon as the political horizon was clear. We have Congreve, who affected to be the Beau as well as the Wit; Lord Hervey, more of the courtier than the Beau-a Wit by inheritance-a peer, assisted into a pre-eminent position by royal preference, and consequent prestige; and all these men were the offspring of the particular state of the times in which they figured: at earlier periods, they would have been deemed effeminate; in later ones, absurd.

Then the scene shifts: intellect had marched forward gigantically the world is grown exacting, disputatious, critical, and such men as Horace Walpole and Brinsley Sheridan appear; the characteristics of wit which adorned that age being well diluted by the feebler talents of Selwyn and Hook.

Of these, and others, table traits,' and other traits, are here given brief chronicles of their life's stage, over which a curtain has so long been dropped, are supplied carefully from well-established sources: it is with characters, not with literary history, that we deal; and do our best to make the portraitures life-like, and to bring forward old memories, which,

b

xviii

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

without the stamp of antiquity, might be suffered to pass into obscurity.

Your Wit and your Beau, be he French or English, is no mediæval personage: the aristocracy of the present day rank among his immediate descendants: he is a creature of a modern and an artificial age; and with his career are mingled many features of civilized life, manners, habits, and traces of family history which are still, it is believed, interesting to the majority of English readers, as they have long been to

GRACE and PHILIP WHARTON.

October, 1860.

GEORGE VILLIERS,

SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

Signs of the Restoration.-Samuel Pepys in his Glory.-A Royal Company.-Pepys 'ready to Weep.'-The Playmate of Charles II.-George Villiers' Inheritance. Two Gallant Young Noblemen.-The Brave Francis Villiers.-After the Battle of Worcester.-Disguising the King.-Villiers in Hiding. He appears as a Mountebank.-Buckingham's Habits,-A Daring Adventure.-Cromwell's Saintly Daughter.-Villiers and the Rabbi.-The Buckingham Pictures and Estates.York House.-Villiers returns to England.-Poor Mary Fairfax.-Villiers in the Tower.-Abraham Cowley, the Poet.-The Greatest Ornament of Whitehall.Buckingham's Wit and Beauty.-Flecknoe's Opinion of him.-His Duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury.-Villiers as a Poet.-As a Dramatist.-A Fearful Censure! -Villiers' Influence in Parliament.-A Scene in the Lords.-The Duke of Ormond in Danger.-Colonel Blood's Outrages.-Wallingford House and Ham House. Madame Ellen.'-The Cabal.-Villiers again in the Tower.-A Change. -The Duke of York's Theatre.-Buckingham and the Princess of Orange.-His last Hours.-His Religion.-Death of Villiers.-The Duchess of Buckingham.

SAMUEL PEPYS, the weather-glass of his time, hails the first glimpse of the Restoration of Charles II. in his usual quaint terms and vulgar sycophancy.

'To Westminster Hall,' says he; 'where I heard how the Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his mace. The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as themselves; and now they begin to talk loud of the king.' And the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large bonfire in the Exchange, and people called out, ‘God bless King Charles!'

This was in March 1660; and during that spring Pepys was

B

2

SIGNS OF THE RESTORATION.

noting down how he did not think it possible that 'my Lord Protector,' Richard Cromwell, should come into power again; how there were great hopes of the king's arrival; how Monk, the Restorer, was feasted at Mercers' Hall (Pepys's own especial); how it was resolved that a treaty be offered to the king, privately; how he resolved to go to sea with 'my lord;' and how, while they lay at Gravesend, the great affair which brought back Charles Stuart was virtually accomplished. Then, with various parentheses, inimitable in their way, Pepys carries on his narrative. He has left his father's 'cuttingroom' to take care of itself; and finds his cabin little, though his bed is convenient, but is certain, as he rides at anchor with my lord,' in the ship, that the king 'must of necessity come in,' and the vessel sails round and anchors in Lee Roads. To the castles about Deal, where our fleet' (our fleet, the saucy son of a tailor!) 'lay and anchored; great was the shoot of guns from the castles, and ships, and our answers.' Glorious Samuel in his element, to be sure.

Then the wind grew high: he began to be 'dizzy and squeamish;' nevertheless employed 'Lord's Day' in looking through the lieutenant's glass at two good merchantmen, and the women in them, 'being pretty handsome;' then in the afternoon he first saw Calais, and was pleased, though it was at a great distance. All eyes were looking across the Channel just then-for the king was at Flushing; and, though the 'Fanatiques' still held their heads up high, and the Cavaliers also talked high on the other side, the cause that Pepys was bound to, still gained ground.

Then they begin to speak freely of King Charles;' churches in the City, Samuel declares, were setting up his arms; merchant-ships-more important in those days-were hanging out his colours. He hears, too, how the Mercers' Company were making a statue of his gracious Majesty, to set up in the Exchange. Ah! Pepys's heart is merry he has forty shillings (some shabby perquisite) given him by

SAMUEL PEPYS IN HIS GLORY.

3

Captain Cowes of the 'Paragon;' and 'my lord' in the evening 'falls to singing' a song upon the Rump to the tune of the Blacksmith.'

The hopes of the Cavalier party are hourly increasing, and those of Pepys we may be sure also; for Pim, the tailor, spends a morning in his cabin putting a great many ribbons to a sail.' And the king is to be brought over suddenly, 'my lord' tells him and indeed it looks like it, for the sailors are drinking Charles's health in the streets of Deal, on their knees; ‘which, methinks,' says Pepys, 'is a little too much;' and 'methinks' so, worthy Master Pepys, also.

Then, how the news of the Parliamentary vote of the king's declaration was received! Pepys becomes eloquent.

'He that can fancy a fleet (like ours) in her pride, with pendants loose, guns roaring, caps flying, and the loud " Vive le Roi !" echoed from one ship's company to another; he, and he only, can apprehend the joy this inclosed vote was received with, or the blessing he thought himself possessed of that bore it.'

Next, orders come for my lord' to sail forthwith to the king; and the painters and tailors set to work, Pepys superintending, cutting out some pieces of yellow cloth in the fashion of a crown and C. R.; and putting it upon a fine sheet'-and that is to supersede the States' arms, and is finished and set up. And the next day, on May 14, the Hague is seen plainly by us, my lord going up in his night-gown into the cuddy.'

6

And then they land at the Hague; some nasty Dutchmen' come on board to offer their boats, and get money, which Pepys does not like; and in time they find themselves in the Hague, 'a most neat place in all respects:' salute the Queen of Bohemia and the Prince of Orange-afterwards William III.—and find at their place of supper nothing but a 'sallet' and two or three bones of mutton provided for ten of us, which was very strange.' Nevertheless, on they sail,