In hope to turn them into presidents;
The him of hims, although in judgment small,
That fain would be the biggest at Whitehall;
The he, that does for justice coin postpone,
As on account may be hereafter shown.
The noble author, with what cause the reader is now enabled to determine, piqued himself especially upon the satirical vigour of these last verses. "As to the character of Amiel, I confess my lines are something pointed: the one reason being, that it alludes much to a manner of expression of this writer's, as may be seen by the marginal notes; and a second will soon be allowed. The figure of Amiel has been so squeezed into paint, that his soul is seen in spite of the varnish." As these verses were written on an occasion, when personal indignation must have fired his Grace's wit, they incline us to believe, with Mr Malone, that his friends, Clifford and Sprat, had the greatest share in the lively farce of "The Rehearsal."
Buckingham's death was as awful a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost both the means of procuring, and the power of enjoying, the pleasures to which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of ambition, into the last degree of contempt and disregard. His dying scene, in a paltry inn in Yorkshire, has been immortalized by Pope's beautiful lines:
In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,
The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung;
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,