Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him ;
A proof that chance alone makes every creature,
A very Killigrew without good nature.
For what a Bessus has he always lived,
And his own kickings notably contrived?
For, there's the folly that's still mixt with fear,
Cowards more blows than any hero bear;
Of fighting sparks some may their pleasures say,
But 'tis a bolder thing to run away.

The world may well forgive him all his ill,
For every fault does prove his penance still;
Falsely he falls into some dangerous noose,
And then as meanly labours to get loose;
A life so infamous is better quitting,
Spent in base injury and low submitting. †

* A cowardly braggadocio character in Beaumont and Fletcher's excellent play of "King and no King."

+ No one could know the cowardice of Lord Rochester so well as Mulgrave, who, in his Memoirs, records the following infamous instance of it. He had heard it reported, that Lord Rochester had said something of him very malicious: "I therefore sent Colonel Aston, a very mettled friend of mine, to call him to account for it. He denied the words; and, indeed, I was soon convinced lie had never said them but the mere report, though I found' it to be false, obliged me (as I then foolishly thought) to go on with the quarrel; and the next day was appointed for us to fight on horseback, a way in England a little unusual, but it was his part to chuse. Accordingly I and my second lay the night before at Knightsbridge, privately, to avoid the being secured at London upon any suspicion; which yet we found ourselves more in danger of there, because we had all the appearance of highway-men, that had a mind to lie skulking in an odd inn for one night; but this, I suppose, the people of that house were used to, and so took no notice of us, but liked us the better. In the morning, we met the Lord Rochester at the place appointed, who, instead of James Porter, whom, he assured Aston, he would make his second, brought an errant lifeguard-man, whom nobody knew. To this Mr Aston took exception, upon the at

I'd like to have left out his poetry;
Forgot by all almost as well as me.
Sometimes he has some humour, never wit,
And if it rarely, very rarely, hit,

'Tis under so much nasty rubbish laid,
To find it out's the cinderwoman's trade,

count of his being no suitable adversary; especially considering how extremely well he was mounted, whereas we had only a couple of pads. Upon which, we all agreed to fight on foot: But, as my Lord Rochester and I were riding into the next field, in order to it, he told me, that he had at first chosen to fight on horseback, because he was so weak with a distemper, that he found himself unfit to fight at all any way, much less a-foot. I was extremely surprised, because, at that time, no man had a better reputation for courage; and (my anger against him being quite over, because I was satisfied that he never spoke those words I resented,) I took the liberty of representing, what a ridiculous story it would make if we returned without fighting; and therefore advised him, for both our sakes, especially for his own, to consider better of it; since I must be obliged, in my own defence, to lay the fault on him, by telling the truth of the matter. His answer was, that he submitted to it; and hoped, that I would not desire the advantage of having to do with any man in so weak a condition. I replied, that, by such an argument, he had sufficiently tied my hands, upon condition I might call our seconds to be witnesses of the whole business; which he consented to, and so we parted. When we returned to London, we found it full of this quarrel, upon our being absent so long; and therefore Mr Aston thought himself obliged to write down every word and circumstance of this whole matter, in order to spread every where the true reason of our returning without having fought; which being never in the least either contradicted or resented by the Lord Rochester, entirely ruined his reputation as to courage, (of which I was really sorry to be the occasion,) though no body had still a greater as to wit; which supported him pretty well in the world, notwithstanding some more accidents of the same kind, that never fail to succeed one another when once people know a man's weakness."-Memoirs of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham.

Conscious of his infamy, Rochester only ventured to reply to Sheffield, the real author of the above satire, by some cold sneers on his expedition to Tangiers, which occur in the poem called "Rochester's Farewell."

Who, for the wretched remnants of a fire,
Must toil all day in ashes and in mire.
So lewdly dull his idle works appear,

The wretched text deserves no comments here Where one poor thought sometimes, left all alone, For a whole page of dulness must atone.

How vain a thing is man, and how unwise! E'en he, who would himself the most despise! I, who so wise and humble seem to be, Now my own vanity and pride can't see. While the world's nonsense is so sharply shown, We pull down others but to raise our own; That we may angels seem, we paint them elves, And are but satires to set up ourselves. I, who have all this while been finding fault, E'en with my master, who first satire taught; And did by that describe the task so hard, It seems stupendous and above reward; Now labour with unequal force to climb That lofty hill, unreached by former time,-'Tis just that I should to the bottom fall, Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

FAMILIAR EPISTLE

то

MR JULIAN,

SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.

THE extremity of license in manners, necessarily leads to equal license in personal satire; and there never was an age in which both were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established burden formerly sung to them:

Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone.

Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as much as any one of his age; to which his own words, in several places of his writings, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues and epilogues he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the employment which it found for the half and three quarter wits and courtiers of the time:

Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes;
Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times.
Scandal, the glory of the English nation,

Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion:

Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith they may hang their harp upon the willows;
'Tis just like children when they box with pillows.
See Vol. X. p. 365.

Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely, while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, secretary, as he called himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits Coffeehouse, as it was called; and dispersed, among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort, copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors." He is described," says Mr Malone, 66 as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel." Several satires were written, in the form of addresses, to him, as well as the following. There is one among the State Poems, beginning,

Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,

Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,

Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence :

This did inspire my muse, when, out at eel,

She saw her needy secretary reel.

Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;

A crying scandal, that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expence
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.

Another, called, "A Consoling Epistle to Julian," is said to have been written by the Duke of Buckingham.

From a passage in one of the "Letters from the Dead to the Living," we learn, that, after Julian's death, and the madness of his. successor, called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more that "brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones faster than lampoons exposed them."

In another epistle of the same collection, supposed to be written by Julian from the shades, to Will Pierre, a low comedian, he is made thus to boast of the extent of the dominion which he exercised when on earth.

"The conscious Tub Tavern can witness, and my Berry Street apartment testify, the solicitations I have had, for the first copy of a new lampoon, from the greatest lords of the court, though their own folly and their wives' vices were the subjects. My person was so sacred, that the terrible scan-man had no terrors for me,