The Wits and Beaux of Society | Page 9

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 medi?val 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.
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THE WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY.

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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' 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 Captain Cowes of the