The Wits and Beaux of Society | Page 9

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, 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.
* * * * *

THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY.

* * * * *

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's 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's 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 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 'cutting-room' 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'