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 everything by starts, but nothing long;

Who, in the course of one revolving moon,

Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;

Then, all for women, painting, fiddling, drinking;

Besides a thousand freaks that died in thinking.

DRYDEN.

We must now transport the reader to the magnificent hotel in —— Street, inhabited at this time by the celebrated George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom Dryden has doomed to a painful immortality by the few lines which we have prefixed to this chapter. Amid the gay and licentious of the laughing Court of Charles, the Duke was the most licentious and most gay; yet, while expending a princely fortune, a strong constitution, and excellent talents, in pursuit of frivolous pleasures, he nevertheless nourished deeper and more extensive designs; in which he only failed from want of that fixed purpose and regulated perseverance essential to all important enterprises, but particularly in politics.

It was long past noon; and the usual hour of the Duke’s levee — if anything could be termed usual where all was irregular — had been long past. His hall was filled with lackeys and footmen, in the most splendid liveries; the interior apartments, with the gentlemen and pages of his household, arrayed as persons of the first quality, and, in that respect, rather exceeding than falling short of the Duke in personal splendour. But his antechamber, in particular, might be compared to a gathering of eagles to the slaughter, were not the simile too dignified to express that vile race, who, by a hundred devices all tending to one common end, live upon the wants of needy greatness, or administer to the pleasures of summer-teeming luxury, or stimulate the wild wishes of lavish and wasteful extravagance, by devising new modes and fresh motives of profusion. There stood the projector, with his mysterious brow, promising unbounded wealth to whomsoever might choose to furnish the small preliminary sum necessary to change egg-shells into the great arcanum. There was Captain Seagull, undertaker for a foreign settlement, with the map under his arm of Indian or American kingdoms, beautiful as the primitive Eden, waiting the bold occupants, for whom a generous patron should equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came, fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This, light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure — the pigeon rather than the rook — but at heart the same sly, shrewd, cold-blooded calculator, as yonder old hard-featured professor of the same science, whose eyes are grown dim with watching of the dice at midnight; and whose fingers are even now assisting his mental computation of chances and of odds. The fine arts, too — I would it were otherwise — have their professors amongst this sordid train. The poor poet, half ashamed, in spite of habit, of the part which he is about to perform, and abashed by consciousness at once of his base motive and his shabby black coat, lurks in yonder corner for the favourable moment to offer his dedication. Much better attired, the architect presents his splendid vision of front and wings, and designs a palace, the expense of which may transfer his employer to a jail. But uppermost of all, the favourite musician, or singer, who waits on my lord to receive, in solid gold, the value of the dulcet sounds which solaced the banquet of the preceding evening.

Such, and many such like, were the morning attendants of the Duke of Buckingham — all genuine descendants of the daughter of the horse-leech, whose cry is “Give, give.”

But the levee of his Grace contained other and very different characters; and was indeed as various as his own opinions and pursuits. Besides many of the young nobility and wealthy gentry of England, who made his Grace the glass at which they dressed themselves for the day, and who learned from him how to travel, with the newest and best grace, the general Road to Ruin; there were others of a graver character — discarded statesmen, political spies, opposition orators, servile tools of administration, men who met not elsewhere, but who regarded the Duke’s mansion as a sort of neutral ground; sure, that if he was not of their opinion today, this very circumstance rendered it most likely he should think with them tomorrow. The Puritans themselves did not shun intercourse with a man whose talents must have rendered him formidable, even if they had not been united with high rank and an immense fortune. Several grave personages, with black suits, short cloaks, and band-strings of a formal cut, were mingled, as we see their portraits in a gallery of paintings, among the gallants who ruffled in silk and embroidery. It is true, they escaped the scandal of being thought intimates of the Duke, by their business being supposed to refer to money matters. Whether these grave and professing citizens mixed politics with money lending, was not known; but it had been long observed, that the Jews, who in general confine themselves to the latter department, had become for some time faithful attendants at the Duke’s levee.

It was high-tide in the antechamber, and had been so for more than an hour, ere the Duke’s gentleman-inordinary ventured into his bedchamber, carefully darkened, so as to make midnight at noonday, to know his Grace’s pleasure. His soft and serene whisper, in which he asked whether it were his Grace’s pleasure to rise, was briefly and sharply answered by the counter questions, “Who waits? — What’s o’clock?”

“It is Jerningham, your Grace,” said the attendant. “It is one, afternoon; and your Grace appointed some of the people without at eleven.”

“Who are they? — What do they want?”

“A message from Whitehall, your Grace.”

“Pshaw! it will keep cold. Those who make all others wait, will be the better of waiting in their turn. Were I to be guilty of ill-breeding, it should rather be to a king than a beggar.”

“The gentlemen from the city.”

“I am tired of them — tired of their all cant, and no religion — all Protestantism, and no charity. Tell them to go to Shaftesbury — to Aldersgate Street with them — that’s the best market for their wares.”

“Jockey, my lord, from Newmarket.”

“Let him ride to the devil — he has horse of mine, and spurs of his own. Any more?”

“The whole antechamber is full, my lord — knights and squires, doctors and dicers.”

“The dicers, with their doctors* in their pockets, I presume.”

* Doctor, a cant name for false dice.

“Counts, captains, and clergymen.”

“You are alliterative, Jerningham,” said the Duke; “and that is a proof you are poetical. Hand me my writing things.”

Getting half out of bed — thrusting one arm into a brocade nightgown, deeply furred with sables, and one foot into a velvet slipper, while the other pressed in primitive nudity the rich carpet — his Grace, without thinking farther on the assembly without, began to pen a few lines of a satirical poem; then suddenly stopped — threw the pen into the chimney — exclaimed that the humour was past — and asked his attendant if there were any letters. Jerningham produced a huge packet.

“What the devil!” said his Grace, “do you think I will read all these? I am like Clarence, who asked a cup of wine, and was soused into a butt of sack. I mean, is there anything which presses?”

“This letter, your Grace,” said Jerningham, “concerning the Yorkshire mortgage.”

“Did I not bid thee carry it to old Gatheral, my steward?”

“I did, my lord,” answered the other; “but Gatheral says there are difficulties.”

“Let the usurers foreclose, then — there is no difficulty in that; and out of a hundred manors I shall scarce miss one,” answered the Duke. “And hark ye, bring me my chocolate.”

“Nay, my lord, Gatheral does not say it is impossible — only difficult.”

“And what is the use of him, if he cannot make it easy? But you are all born to make difficulties,” replied the Duke.

“Nay, if your Grace approves the terms in this schedule, and pleases to sign it, Gatheral will undertake for the matter,” answered Jerningham.

“And could you not have said so at first, you blockhead?” said the Duke, signing the paper without looking at the contents —“What other letters? And remember, I must be plagued with no more business.”

“Billets-doux, my lord — five or six of them. This left at the porter’s lodge by a vizard mask.”

“Pshaw!” answered the Duke, tossing them over, while his attendant assisted in dressing him —“an acquaintance of a quarter’s standing.”

“This given to one of the pages by my Lady ——‘s waiting-woman.”

“Plague on it — a Jeremiade on the subject of perjury and treachery, and not a single new line to the old tune,” said the Duke, glancing over the billet. “Here is the old cant — cruel man — broken vows — Heaven’s just revenge. Why, the woman is thinking of murder — not of love. No one should pretend to write upon so threadbare a topic without having at least some novelty of expression. The despairing Araminta — Lie there, fair desperate. And this — how comes it?”

“Flung into the window of the hall, by a fellow who ran off at full speed,” answered Jerningham.

“This is a better text,” said the Duke; “and yet it is an old one too — three weeks old at least — The little Countess with the jealous lord — I should not care a farthing for her, save for that same jealous lord — Plague on’t, and he’s gone down to the country — this evening — in silence and safety — written with a quill pulled from the wing of Cupid — Your ladyship has left him pen-feathers enough to fly away with — better clipped his wings when you had caught him, my lady — And so confident of her Buckingham’s faith — I hate confidence in a young person. She must be taught better — I will not go.”

“You Grace will not be so cruel!” said Jerningham.

“Thou art a compassionate fellow, Jerningham; but conceit must be punished.”

“But if your lordship should resume your fancy for her?”

“Why, then, you must swear the billet-doux miscarried,” answered the Duke. “And stay, a thought strikes me — it shall miscarry in great style. Hark ye — Is — what is the fellow’s name — the poet — is he yonder?”

“There are six gentlemen, sir, who, from the reams of paper in their pocket, and the threadbare seams at their elbows, appear to wear the livery of the Muses.”

“Poetical once more, Jerningham. He, I mean, who wrote the last lampoon,” said the Duke.

“To whom your Grace said you owed five pieces and a beating!” replied Jerningham.

“The money for his satire, and the cudgel for his praise — Good — find him — give him the five pieces, and thrust the Countess’s billet-doux — Hold — take Araminta’s and the rest of them — thrust them all into his portfolio — All will come out at the Wit’s Coffee-house; and if the promulgator be not cudgelled into all the colours of the rainbow, there is no spite in woman, no faith in crabtree, or pith in heart of oak — Araminta’s wrath alone would overburden one pair of mortal shoulders.”

“But, my Lord Duke,” said his attendant, “this Settle* is so dull a rascal, that nothing he can write will take.”

* Elkana Settle, the unworthy scribbler whom the envy of Rochester and others tried to raise to public estimation, as a rival to Dryden; a circumstance which has been the means of elevating him to a very painful species of immortality.

“Then as we have given him steel to head the arrow,” said the Duke, “we will give him wings to waft it with — wood, he has enough of his own to make a shaft or bolt of. Hand me my own unfinished lampoon — give it to him with the letters — let him make what he can of them all.”

“My Lord Duke — I crave pardon — but your Grace’s style will be discovered; and though the ladies’ names are not at the letters, yet they will be traced.”

“I would have it so, you blockhead. Have you lived with me so long, and cannot discover that the éclat of an intrigue is, with me, worth all the rest of it?”

“But the danger, my Lord Duke?” replied Jerningham. “There are husbands, brothers, friends, whose revenge may be awakened.”

“And beaten to sleep again,” said Buckingham haughtily. “I have Black Will and his cudgel for plebeian grumblers; and those of quality I can deal with myself. I lack breathing and exercise of late.”

“But yet your Grace ——”

“Hold your peace, fool! I tell you that your poor dwarfish spirit cannot measure the scope of mine. I tell thee I would have the course of my life a torrent — I am weary of easy achievements, and wish for obstacles, that I can sweep before my irresistible course.”

Another gentleman now entered the apartment. “I humbly crave your Grace’s pardon,” he said; “but Master Christian is so importunate for admission instantly, that I am obliged to take your Grace’s pleasure.”

“Tell him to call three hours hence. Damn his politic pate, that would make all men dance after his pipe!”

“I thank thee for the compliment, my Lord Duke,” said Christian, entering the apartment in somewhat a more courtly garb, but with the same unpretending and undistinguished mien, and in the same placid and indifferent manner with which he had accosted Julian Peveril upon different occasions during his journey to London. “It is precisely my present object to pipe to you; and you may dance to your own profit, if you will.”

“On my word, Master Christian,” said the Duke haughtily, “the affair should be weighty, that removes ceremony so entirely fr............