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WHAT MIGHT HE NOT HAVE BEEN?

it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a scoundrel withal to be damned in France.'

A report having been circulated that De Grammont was dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret. The report was contradicted by Ninon de l'Enclos. The Chevalier was then eighty-six years of age; 'nevertheless he was,' Ninon says, 'so young, that I think him as lively as when he hated sick people, and loved them after they had recovered their health ;' a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was always on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers. With this long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear current; with all these advantages, what might he not have been to society, had his energy been well applied, his wit innocent, his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure to stand muster as his manners?

BEAU FIELDING.

On Wits and Beaux.-Scotland Yard in Charles II.'s day.-Orlando of 'The Tatler.'Beau Fielding, Justice of the Peace.-Adonis in Search of a Wife.-The Sham Widow.-Ways and Means.-Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine.-Quarrels with the King. The Beau's Second Marriage.-The Last Days of Fops and Beaux.

'LET us be wise, boys, here's a fool coming,' said a sensible man, when he saw Beau Nash's splendid carriage draw up to the door. Is a beau a fool? Is a sharper a fool? Was Bonaparte a fool? If you reply 'no' to the last two questions, you must give the same answer to the first. A beau is a fox, but not a fool-a very clever fellow, who, knowing the weakness of his brothers and sisters in the world, takes advantage of it to make himself a fame and a fortune. Nash, the son of a glass-merchant-Brummell, the hopeful of a small shopkeeper-became the intimates of princes, dukes, and fashionables; were petty kings of Vanity Fair, and were honoured by their subjects. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; in the realm of folly, the sharper is a monarch. The only proviso is, that the cheat come not within the jurisdiction of the law. Such a cheat is the beau or dandy, or fine gentleman, who imposes on his public by his clothes and appearance. Bonâ-fide monarchs have done as much: Louis XIV. won himself the title of Le Grand Monarque by his manners, his dress, and his vanity. Fielding, Nash, and Brummell did nothing more. It is not a question

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ON WITS AND BEAUX.

whether such roads to eminence be contemptible or not, but whether their adoption in one station of life be more so than in another. Was Brummell a whit more contemptible than Wales? Or is John Thomas, the pride and glory of the 'Domestics' Free-and-Easy,' whose whiskers, figure, face, and manner are all superb, one atom more ridiculous than your recognized beau? I trow not. What right, then, has your beau to a place among wits? I fancy Chesterfield would be much disgusted at seeing his name side by side with that of Nash in this volume; yet Chesterfield had no objection, when at Bath, to do homage to the king of that city, and may have prided himself on exchanging pinches from diamond-set snuffboxes with that superb gold-laced dignitary in the Pump-room. Certainly, people who thought little of Philip Dormer Stanhope, thought a great deal of the glass-merchant's reprobate son when he was in power, and submitted without a murmur to his impertinences. The fact is, that the beaux and the wits are more intimately connected than the latter would care to own the wits have all been, or aspired to be, beaux, and beaux have had their fair share of wit; both lived for the same purpose-to shine in society: both used the same means-coats and bon-mots. The only distinction is, that the garments of the beaux were better, and their sayings not so good as those of the wits; while the conversation of the wits was better, and their apparel not so striking as those of the beaux. So, my Lord Chesterfield, who prided yourself quite as much on being a fine gentleman as on being a fine wit, you cannot complain at your proximity to Mr. Nash and others who were fine gentlemen, and would have been fine wits if they could.

Robert Fielding was, perhaps, the least of the beaux; but then, to make up for this, he belonged to a noble family; he married a duchess, and, what is more, he beat her. Surely in the kingdom of fools such a man is not to be despised. You may be sure he did not think he was, for was he not made

SCOTLAND YARD IN CHARLES II'S DAY.

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the subject of two papers in 'The Tatler,' and what more could such a man desire?

His father was a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with the Earls of Denbigh, and, therefore; with the Hapsburgs, from whom the Beau and the Emperors of Austria had the common honour of being descended. Perhaps neither of them had sufficient sense to be proud of the greatest intellectual ornament of their race, the author of Tom Jones;' but as our hero was dead before the humorist was born, it is not fair to conjecture what he might have thought on the subject.

It does not appear that very much is known of this great gem of the race of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be very handsome, and the folly to think that his face would be his fortune: it certainly stood him in good stead at times, but it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma.

His father was not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to study laws which he was only fitted to break. The young Adonis had sense enough to see that destiny did not beckon him to fame in the gloom of a musty law court, and removed a little further up to the Thames, and the more fashionable region of Scotland Yard. Here, where now Z 300 repairs to report his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, swore hasty oaths of choice invention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe-bowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who passed to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from the royalties of Scotland, who, when they visited the South, were there lodged, as being conveniently near to Whitehall Palace. It is odd enough that the three architects, Inigo Jones, Vanbrugh, and Wren, all lived in this yard.

It was not to be supposed that a man who could so well appreciate a handsome face and well-cut doublet as Charles II. should long overlook his neighbour, Mr. Robert Fielding, and

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ORLANDO OF THE TATLER.'

in due course the Beau, who had no other diploma, found himself in the honourable position of a justice of the peace.

The emoluments of this office enabled Orlando, as 'The Tatler' calls him, to shine forth in all his glory. With an enviable indifference to the future, he launched out into an expenditure which alone would have made him popular in a country where the heaviest purse makes the greatest gentleman. His lacqueys were arrayed in the brightest yellow coats with black sashes-the Hapsburg colours. He had a carriage, of course, but, like Sheridan's, it was hired, though drawn by his own horses. This carriage was described as being shaped like a sea-shell; and 'The Tatler' calls it 'an open tumbril of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs and the grandeur of his personage to the best advantage.' The said limbs were Fielding's especial pride : he gloried in the strength of his leg and arm; and when he walked down the street, he was followed by an admiring crowd, whom he treated with as much haughtiness as if he had been the emperor himself, instead of his cousin five hundred times removed. He used his strength to good or bad purpose, and was a redoubted fighter and bully, though goodnatured withal. In the Mall, as he strutted, he was the cynosure of all female eyes. His dress had all the elegance of which the graceful costume of that period was capable, though Fielding did not, like Brummell, understand the delicacy of a quiet, but studied style. Those were simpler, somewhat more honest days. It was not necessary for a man to cloak his vices, nor be ashamed of his cloak. The beau thena-day openly and arrogantly gloried in the grandeur, of his attire; and bragging was a part of his character. Fielding was made by his tailor; Brummell made his tailor the only point in common to both was that neither of them tailor's bill.

paid the

The fine gentleman, under the Stuarts, was fine only in his lace and his velvet doublet; his language was coarser, his man

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