the Dutch-either that with Opdam in 1665, or that with De Ruyter in 1773, but probably the latter.* The single experiment quite satisfied him with scenes of glory. This we find from some verses he wrote on the occasion, for, like Cicero, it was his weakness to indulge in versification, for which he had no vocation. It might have been all very well for him to have followed the prevailing fashion, which made the writing of copies of verses the necessary accomplishment of a gentleman about town, if he had had no character to maintain, or had even remembered the litera scripta manet, and forborne to publish.

The fortune of the dramatist now sunk from bad to worse, till it culminated in a seven years' residence in the Fleet, with an utter obliviousness of his existence, apparently, on the part of those summer friends who had fluttered with him in the sunbeams of fortune. Even in quarters connected with the ties of business, where romance is sometimes found to linger when she has forsaken more congenial regions, all resource failed him. The publisher who had realised largely by his writings is even said to have denied him a loan of L.20. But fortune at length relented. The loves and the hates of Charles were now no more, and his brother, James, Duke of York, reigned in his stead. The works of Wycherley, with a fortune better than that of their author, were not banished from the stage, and the "Plain-dealer” chanced to be performed one evening when the king was present. Admiration of the piece, and commiseration for the misfortunes of its

* Mr Leigh Hunt, "Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, with Biographical Notices," inclines to the former; Lord Macaulay to the latter : "Essay on Dramatists of the Restoration."

author, seem to have moved him to an act of unwonted liberality, an almost solitary instance on behalf of men of letters, and he gave directions not only for the payment of Wycherley's debts, but settled on him a pension of L.200 a year. It is impossible to connect this with any certainty with the casting again of his theological coat; but as the event did occur, it must be regarded as suspicious. Nothing is known of any conditions on the subject. One, indeed, there was which was only less illiberal than the other would have been. It was made dependent on his residence in England.

Somewhere about the same time, or a little later, he fell into the property by the death of his father; but even this failed to remove his still existing embarrassments; for, singular as it may seem, he is said, from a feeling of modesty, to have understated his liabilities to the noble friend deputed by the king to wait upon him, and to have stated only those necessary to relieve him from present difficulties. His extravagant habits may probably have added to the unliquidated claims, and the property (like that of many other loyalists) may have been encumbered, as his father had been previously either unable or unwilling to assist him. He was not then a young man; the property was strictly entailed; and as he was on bad terms with the next heir, all these circumstances were unfavourable to his raising any considerable sum of ready money. Time and care had told on both mind and body. His appearance was so altered that Pope, who spoke of him as having the true nobleman look, says it mortified his vanity so deeply that he would sigh over the early portrait of him by Lely, and repeat, Quantum mutatus ab illo. Nor was

VOL. I.

C

the change confined to his outward appearance. An illness had affected his memory in a most singular way. What he had heard or read over night would return to his waking thoughts with singular freshness and tenacity, though he was not aware of the source, nor suspected that it did not originate in his own mind. He was still haunted with a morbid desire, in which judgment by no means entered, of extending his literary fame. In pursuance of this feeling, he had published in the year 1704 a volume of wretched verses, amatory and satirical, which were an anachronism in every way. He was then in his sixtyfourth year, neither was the taste of the times by any means so depraved as formerly, and this improvement was indicated in the practice of most of the recent writers.

Among these, a youth destined to take a foremost place among the wits of the time, and then residing in the shades of Windsor Forest, had just published a volume of pastorals, and this had led to a friendship which was strikingly antithetical in all its parts. This youth had an intense reverence for the veterans and chiefs of letters. He had sought with eagerness at his club a sight of Dryden, in his declining years, and the same feeling induced him to seek the acquaintance of Wycherley, and to frequent his company like his shadow. The contrast between the two persons thus brought together was very striking. The youth was sixteen, diminutive, weakly, and deformed, but with eyes that told of the brightness within; the other sixty-four, but with the remains of a commanding presence, and a countenance from which beauty had not perhaps quite departed. Nor were the two volumes thus simultaneously given to the world less dissimilar than the persons. The one, feeble,

hobbling, and careless in manner, and in matter obscene; while the other, breathing of the freshness and purity of rural life, was nervous, epigrammatic, and marked with carefulness. Wycherley had still another volume similar to the last, yet unpublished. This, in an evil hour, he committed to his young friend for revision, and a correspondence ensued. Pope, for of course it was he,—with his fastidious taste and vigorous style, in order to make anything of the worthless mass, was obliged to score out, and interline, and mangle in a sad way. In the correspondence, the confession of his diffidence in taking too great but necessary liberties being made with more candour than delicacy, naturally grated upon the feelings of the foolish old man, and the intercourse came to an abrupt conclusion.

The close of Wycherley's life was marked by a strange episode. At the age of seventy-five, with the double purpose of inflicting an injury on the next heir to the family property, whom he disliked, and of contributing to his own comfort, he married a young wife, under the supposition of her having considerable property. He survived the event little more than a week. Shortly before his decease, having obtained her consent to a parting request, he told her "it was only that she should never marry an old man again." His death occurred at the close of 1715.

The young widow did not make any unnecessary mourning for him, but very shortly after married a man with whom it was suspected she was in collusion in her designs upon the old man. She, of course, became possessed of the manuscript volume of verse, which, though almost illegible with erasures and interlineations, and utterly worthless but for the touches of Pope visible throughout,

was, on the strength of these and the reputation of Wycherley, ultimately made public.

Wycherley had the reputation of having been personally modest and gentle, good-natured and sincere. He afforded an evidence of the first in having declined to join with Dryden in writing a comedy, which he has recorded in some verses. The title of Manly applied to himself from his character of that name in “The Plain-dealer," is supposed to have been given from its applicability; but his comedies, though abounding in wit, would not give a favourable idea of his morality. Indeed, in them especially, it may be said, in the words of an eminent writer in his ingenious plea for the comic dramatists of this period, "that there no cold moral reigns."* Even in the wit of the dialogue, though abundant and in some respects in excess, since the fools come in for their full share, the effort is not always concealed. Wycherley's writings, on the whole, cannot be said to belong to the first order. Hints are taken freely both from the French and Spanish comedy, as well as from Shakespeare; and what he takes he by no means improves, especially in a moral point of view. His style, though deficient in airiness, is clear and forcible, unaffected and pure.

The next of these writers to be noticed is SIR JOHN VANBRUGH, soldier, dramatist, and architect, descended from a Flemish family, according to the most probable of the confused and contradictory accounts respecting him, and born

* See Lamb's essay "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," in which he has ingeniously expressed his predilection for these entertaining productions, and endeavoured to prove their immorality innocuous by removing them from all connexion with actual life into the category of mere conventional fiction. The argument is certainly equivocal and singular, coming from so pure a writer.