§ v
He had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the city watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Nell Gwyn, who always called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the distinction which the public made between him and them. “He may do what he chooses,” said Wilmot, “he is never in the wrong.” The judgment of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good nature, such was the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed and caressed him, but politics were not much to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and to wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him.... Like many other men who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffee houses as without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first representation was supported by his single authority against the whole clamour of the pit and came forth successful at the second trial....
Macaulay thus summarises his career and character, and I am led quite naturally to the consideration of one aspect of his life on which I have scarcely touched, and that is his connection with the men of letters of his day. The often-quoted saying, that Butler owed to him that the court tasted his Hudibras, Wycherley that the town liked his Plain Dealer, and that the Duke of Buckingham deferred the publication of his Rehearsal until he was sure that Lord Buckhurst would not rehearse it upon him again—this saying had much truth in it. It is better, I think, to quote the disinterested opinion of Macaulay rather than the panegyrics of Prior or Dryden, or any of the contemporary authors who stood too greatly in Dorset’s debt for complete impartiality:
Such a patron of letters England had never seen [says Macaulay]. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary jealousy or difference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset’s princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior, who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life; and the best comedy of Dryden’s mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset’s country seat. The munificent earl might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as those of Butler.
One can, perhaps, scarcely agree with Macaulay in this estimate of Dorset’s literary gifts. The songs he wrote are little more than easy specimens of conventional Restoration verse, and, for my part, I fail to find in them, with the exception of “To all you ladies now at land,” any merit which was not shared by all the numerous song-writers of the day. It certainly cannot be claimed for him that he had any of the vigour, originality, or true poetic impulse of his great-great-grandfather, the old Lord Treasurer, and although it may be argued that the age of Elizabeth and the age of the Restoration differed totally in poetic conception and spontaneity, I still do not admit that Dorset possessed those qualities which might have made up in one direction for those which were lacking in another, I have already quoted his sea-song, unquestionably the best thing he ever wrote, and, to give point to my argument, will quote two further songs, which may stand as typical examples, the first of his graceful but entirely artificial talent, the second of his satire which caused Rochester to say of him:
For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose,
The best good man with the worst natured muse.
SONG
Phyllis, for shame, let us improve
A thousand different ways
Those few short moments snatched by love
From many tedious days.
If you want courage to despise
The censure of the grave,
Though Love’s a tyrant in your eyes,
Your heart is but a slave.
My love is full of noble pride
Nor can it e’er submit
To let that fop, Discretion, ride
In triumph over it.
False friends I have, as well as you,
Who daily counsel me
Fame and ambition to pursue
And leave off loving thee.
But when the least regard I show
To fools who thus advise,
May I be dull enough to grow
Most miserably wise.
To CATHERINE SEDLEY [married Sir David Colyear]
Proud with the spoils of royal cully,
With false pretence to wit and parts,
She swaggers like a battered bully
To try the tempers of men’s hearts.
Though she appear as glittering fine
As gems, and jets, and paints can make her,
She ne’er can win a breast like mine:
The Devil and Sir David take her.
The fugitive character of his own verses does not, however, in any way detract from his splendour as a patron. It is well known that Matthew Prior as a boy was found by him reading Horace in a tavern in Westminster, when, struck by his intelligence, Dorset sent the boy at his own expense to school until his election as King’s Scholar. Prior in after years did not forget this kindness. His poems are dedicated to the son of his earliest patron, and there are, as students of Prior will remember, several amongst them especially written to members of Dorset’s family, notably the “Lines to Lord Buckhurst [Dorset’s son] when playing with a cat.” The many letters from Prior to Lord Dorset, now in Lord Bath’s possession, testify to the endurance of their friendship: one of these letters ends with a poem, which I quote, as I am under the impression that it is not included in any edition of Prior’s works:
Spare Dorset’s sacred life, discerning Fate,
And Death shall march through camps and courts in state,
Emptying his quiver on the vulgar great:
Round Dorset’s board let Peace and Plenty dance,
Far off let Famine her sad reign advance,
And War walk deep in blood through conquered France.
Apollo thus began the mystic strain,
The Muses’ sons all bowed and said Amen.
It is perhaps less commonly known that Dryden also owed, in another way, much to Dorset. The account is thus given by Macaulay:
Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed his influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and alleviating misfortune. One of the first acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any papist among the servants of their Majesties; and Dryden was not only a papist, but an apostate. He had, moreover, aggravated the guilt of his apostacy by calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as the pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement. He was removed; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn.
Dryden, apparently, despite this generosity, continued to lament his ill-fortune, and his contemporary Blackmore, in a poem called Prince Arthur, satirises him in the character of Laurus for his assiduity at Dorset’s doors—Dorset being the Sakil of the poem, Sackville in transparent disguise:
The poets’ nation did obsequious wait
For the kind dole divided at his gate.
Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared,
An old, revolted, unbelieving bard,
Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard.
Sakil’s high roof, the Muses’ palace, rung
With endless cries, and endless songs he sung.
To bless good Sakil Laurus would be first;
But Sakil’s prince and Sakil’s God he cursed.
Sakil without distinction threw his bread,
Despised the flatterer, but the poet fed.
It is true that in his Essay on Satire, which, like his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, is dedicated in terms of the most outrageous flattery to Dorset, Dryden makes full acknowledgement of the obligation:
I must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your Lordship and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself; then your Lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief.
THE BROWN GALLERY
Built by Archbishop Bourchier in 1460
But I think there may be detected, even in this acknowledgment, the note of whining to which Macaulay, in the continuation of the passage I have quoted, draws attention. It is also related that Dryden, when dining with Dorset, found a hundred-pound note hidden under his plate. In a letter preserved at Knole, in Dryden’s beautiful handwriting, he makes further acknowledgement, after proffering a petition on behalf of a friend who wished to obtain rooms in Somerset House:
... if I had confidence enough, my Lord, I would presume to mind you of a favour which your Lordship formerly gave me some hopes of from the Queen; but if it be not proper or convenient for you to ask, I dare give your Lordship no further trouble in it, being on so many other accounts already your Lordship’s most obliged obedient servant,
JOHN DRYDEN.
We know that Dryden was a constant visitor at Knole; we have even an anecdote of one of his visits. It is related that someone proposed that each member of the party should write an impromptu, and that Dryden, when the allotted time had expired, should judge between them. Silence ensued while each guest wrote busily, or laboriously, upon the sheet of paper provided: Dorset scribbled a couple of lines and threw it down on the table. At the end of the time the umpire rose, and said that after careful consideration he awarded the prize to their host; he would read out what his Lordship had written; it was: “I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden or order five hundred pounds on demand. DORSET.”
It would be interesting to know who were the other members of the party; perhaps Tom Durfey, perhaps Lady Dorset, who is described as “jeune, belle, riche, et sage,” perhaps Rochester, whose portrait hangs in the Poets’ Parlour—and I imagine the Poets’ Parlour to have been the scene of this little incident, “a chamber of parts and players,” says Horace Walpole, “which is proper enough in that house”—a portrait of a young man in a heavy wig, labelled “died repentant after a profligate life,” as I, not understanding the long words, used to gabble off to strangers along with other piteous little shibboleths when showing the house. Certainly Shadwell was not there, for he and Dryden were at mortal enmity; Shadwell, his successor in the Laureateship, another friend and protégé of Dorset’s, described by Dryden as being
Round as a globe, and liquored every chink,
Goodly and great, he sails behind his link.
For all this bulk there’s nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue,
and who writes of Dorset that he was received by him as a member of his family, and furthermore, rather plaintively, in a letter at Knole, beseeching Lord Dorset’s intervention, as “they have put Durfey’s play before ours, and this day a play of Dryden’s is read to them and that is to be acted before ours too.”
Tom Durfey, whose portrait is upstairs in Lady Betty’s room, painted in profile, with surely the most formidable of all hooked noses, was almost a pensioner at Knole, having his own rooms over the dairy, and is guilty of these execrable verses in praise of his second home:
THE GLORY OF KNOLE
Knole most famous in Kent still appears,
Where mansions surveyed for a thousand long years,
In whose domes mighty monarchs might dwell,
Where five hundred rooms are, as Boswell[[11]] can tell!
I do not think that Durfey can have been very greatly esteemed by his patron, nor yet on very intimate terms with him, but kept rather, contemptuously, as permanent rhymester to Dorset’s little court, for another picture, small, obscure, but entertainingly intimate, shows him in humble company in the Steward’s Room with Lowry, the Steward; George Allan, a clothier; Mother Moss, whoever she may have been; Maximilian Buck, the chaplain; and one Jack Randall. His name is certainly not one of the most illustrious among the many poets and writers represented on the walls of the Poets’ Parlour—Edmund Waller, Matthew Prior, Thomas Flattman, John Dryden, William Congreve, William Wycherley, Thomas Otway, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Samuel Butler, Abraham Cowley, Nicholas Rowe, William Cartwright, Sir Kenelm Digby, Alexander Pope. And with this last name I come to the final tribute paid to the splendid Dorset—Pope’s epitaph upon his monument in the Sackville chapel at Withyham:
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muses’ pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.
The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state:
Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay,
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Blest satirist! who touched the mean so true,
As showed vice had his hate and pity too.
Blest courtier! who could King and country please,
Yet sacred kept his friendships and his ease.
Blest peer! his great forefather’s every grace
Reflected and reflecting in his race,
Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine,
And patriots still, or poets, deck the line.