Dryden’s satires, written later, show a better and far stronger side of his literary quality; and Buckingham, long after his lineaments shall have faded from a mob of histories, will stand preserved as Zimri, in the strong pickle of Dryden’s verse; you will have met the picture, perhaps without knowing it, for the magnificent courtier, who wrote “The Rehearsal:”
“A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long,
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.”
A man who writes in that way about a peer of England was liable to write of lesser men in a manner that would stir hot blood; and he did. Once upon a time this great king at “Will’s” was waylaid and sorrily cudgelled; which is an experience that—however it may come about—is not elevating in its effects, nor does it increase our sense of a man’s dignity; for it is an almost universal fact that the men most worthy of respect, in almost any society, are the men who never do get quietly cudgelled.