CHAPTER VII.

SCOTLAND was conspicuously represented among the literary rakes of the court of Charles II. in the person of John Maitland, Lord, and afterwards Duke of Lauderdale. With his military and political career, the latter of which was very eventful, we have no concern here. At the date of the Restoration, he was a man of forty-six. He was familiar with Latin, Hebrew, French and Italian. Bruce describes him as a person “of a most extraordinary learning and great memory; as disagreeable in his conversation as in his person; his head was that of a Saracen fiery face, and his tongue too big for his mouth; and his pronunciation high Scotch-no Highlander like him-uttering bald jests for wit, and repeating good ones from others and ever spoiling them in relating them, which delighted the King much. . . . Besides tiring the King with his bald jests, he was continually putting his fingers into the King's snuff box."

His chief attractions to the king were his acquaintance with belles lettres, his rough humour and his coarse but very pungent wit. And besides all this, his political services in Scotch affairs made it

necessary that his Majesty should see a good deal of him. In vice, he appears to have equalled the worst of the literary rakes.

Lauderdale had the coolness to go, uninvited, to any party at which the king was present. Charles observed to some of his intimates that this greatly annoyed him, as he was growing heartily tired of Lauderdale and his rough words and works. Shortly afterwards one of these intimates was honoured by the presence of the king at dinner. Lord Ailesbury tells the story:

"We shall be pestered with Lauderdale," said Charles to his host.

"If your Majesty will give way to it, I have invented a means to disgust him so at my house," replied the host, "that your Majesty, no doubt, shall for ever be freed from him."

2

"That person," says Ailesbury, says Ailesbury, "ordered a double sillibub glass, and it was concerted that the King, after having drunk plentifully, should ask the master of the house for a sillibub to refresh him; and by a token the King knew which of the two to take, and commending it greatly, the Duke of Lauderdale, for such was his title, then took the double glass in his hand, he having a great share of confidence (very natural to his country), and

1 Memoirs, vol. i., p. 15.

2 A sillibub was a mixture of wine or cider, with cream or milk, forming a soft curd: a very questionable form of refreshment after plentiful drinking.

drinking the other half, which was prepared in a very different manner, he was obliged to confirm the opinion expressed by the king and declare it excellent. It is unnecessary to give the further details of the incident-they may be readily imagined. In a few minutes, the unfortunate Lauderdale had to be carried away, and the king was never again "troubled with him on such diverting occasions".

Lauderdale was got rid of altogether three years after the date of Rochester's joining the court, by being sent as High Commissioner to Scotland, with very far-reaching designs as well as powers, and there he did the king good service, somewhat at the expense of the king's Scotch subjects.

Among the less remembered literary rakes at the court of Charles II. was Fleetwood Sheppard, an Oxfordshire man, and a B.A. of Christ Church, Oxford. Anthony Wood says that "After his Majesty's Restoration, he retired to London, hanged on the Court, became a Debauchee and an Atheist, a grand companion with Charles, Lord Buckhurst," and others.

Sheppard had some slight turn for literature of an unpretentious kind, as Wood tells us that he was the author of "Several Poems-scattered in several Books," and also of "The True and Genuine Explanation of one of King James's Declarations". He is mentioned as having been one of the regular attendants at the private supper-parties in which Charles II. so much delighted. Indeed he may be

said to have been a prominent member of his Majesty's much-beloved Back-Stairs' set, and in every sense a literary rake of the court of Charles II., although not an important or an interesting one. After some of the literary rakes that we have been noticing, it would, at first sight, appear to be a change to turn to one (Etheredge) of whose verses another poet could write :

No unchaste words, with harsh, offensive sound,
The tender ears of blushing maidens wound;
Nor thought, which nauseous images inspire,
And damp the glowing heat of soft desire:
But calm and easy the sweet numbers move,
And every verse is influenced by love.1

Whatever truth there may have been in this statement, as English was then understood, when translated into the modern vernacular, it means that Etheredge's words were too often as unchaste as they were nauseous, and that the only maidens who would not blush at hearing them would be those who did not understand their hideous meanings.

Sir George Etheredge, like Rochester, was educated at an English university and then travelled on the Continent. He was a thin, fair man, with courtly manners, high spirits, and plenty to say for himself. When he returned from his travels, he for a time studied at one of the inns of court; but he found writing plays much more to his taste than learning law; and when he was twenty-eight he

1 To a Lady, by C. Tooke.

produced "The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub," a piece which was acted at the Duke of York's Theatre with considerable success. He then became a favourite companion of Rochester, Buckingham, Buckhurst, Sedley and Savile, and he soon took his place at the court of Charles II. His second play was called "She Would if She Could," and Dryden wrote that it was the best comedy that had appeared since the reformation of the stage. Although this play was at least as successful as its predecessor, it did not encourage the lazy and dissipated Etheredge to produce another for seven years. Rochester thus derided him for this idleness in The Session of the Poets.

But Apollo had got gentle George in his eye;

And frankly confessed, of all men that writ,

There's none had more fancy, sense, judgment, or wit,
But i'th' crying sin idleness he was so hardened,

That his long seven years' silence was not to be pardoned.

Etheredge's third comedy, "The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter," was honoured with an epilogue-of much greater merit than the play-by Dryden, who, in noticing the character of Sir Fopling,

wrote:

Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown,
They seem not of Heaven's making, but their own.
Those nauseous Harlequins in farce may pass,

But there goes more to a substantial ass ;

1 Elsewhere the question whether this poem is really the work of Rochester will be noticed.