h Map sabver 44 Ferance.

GEORGE VILLIERS,

SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

WHEN this extraordinary man, with the figure and genius of Alcibiades, could equally charm the presbyterian Fairfax, and the dissolute Charles; when he alike ridiculed that witty king and his solemn chancellor ; when he plotted the ruin of his country, with a cabal of bad ministers; or, equally unprincipled, supported its cause with bad patriots; one laments that such parts should have been devoid of every virtue. But when Alcibiades turns chemist, when he is a real bubble, and a visionary miser; when ambition is but a frolic; when the worst designs are for the foolishest ends; contempt extinguishes all reflections on his character.

The portrait of this duke has been drawn by

2 [Flecknoe thus describes him, in 'Euterpe revived :' "The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde

In all the world his prince could ever finde,

Or to participate his private cares,

Or bear the publick weight of his affairs.

Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight,

And well-built minds, the steadier with their height,

Such was the composition and frame

O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham.]

four masterly hands; Burnet has hewn it out with his rough chisel; Count Hamilton 3 touched it with that slight delicacy that finishes while it seems but to sketch; Dryden catched the living likeness; Pope completed the historical resemblance. Yet the abilities of this lord appear in no instance more amazing, than that being exposed by two of the greatest poets, he has exposed one of them ten times more severely. Zimri is an admirable portrait; but Bayes an original creation. Dryden satirised Buckingham; but Villiers made Dryden satirise himself."

• Vide Memoires de Grammont.

• Zimri, in Absalom and Achitophel.

["A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
He's every thing by starts, and nothing long ;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fidler, statesman, and buffoon.
In squand'ring wealth was his peculiar art,
Nothing went unrewarded, but desert!
Beggar'd by fools, when still he found, too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate."]

5 In the Epistle to Lord Bathurst.

6 [In a lampoon ascribed to Dryden, the writer says:

"His grace has tormented the players more

Than the Howards or Flecknoes, or all the store
Of d-d dull rogues that e'er plagued them before."
Poems on State Affairs, vol. ii. p. 217.

An instance of astonishing quickness is related of this duke: being present at the first representation of one of Dryden's pieces of heroic nonsense, where a lover says,

"My wound is great, because it is so small","

the duke cried out,

"Then 'twould be greater, were it none at all."

The play was instantly damned.

His grace wrote,

"The Rehearsal," 1671.8

"The Chances, a Comedy;"

altered from Beaumont and Fletcher.

"Reflections upon Poetic Absalom and

Achitophel."" 1682.

7 [In another of his tragedies, says Dr. Lort, is this line: "I follow Fate, which does too fast pursue;"

so I think one may fairly say of Dryden, in more senses than one, none but himself can be his parallel."]

8 [This comedy, Mr. Reed observes, is so perfect a masterpiece in its way, and so truly an original, that, notwithstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imitation, which most kinds of excellence have excited inferior geniuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be attempted with regard to this, which through a whole century still stands alone; notwithstanding that the very plays it was written expressly to ridicule, are forgotten; and the taste it was meant to expose, totally exploded. Biog. Dram. vol. i. p. 460.]

9 Athenæ, vol. ii. p. 805.