Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left."
"This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who ever lived, an estate of 20,000l. a year, to be squandered in every wild scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the situation of President of the North, he was suspected of having favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation to the Popish plot; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distinguished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire; which we may believe was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes in the "Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the infamous part of his character is touched upon; and the unprincipled libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of caressing her before he changed the bloody clothes in which he had murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spendthrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the following sober historical account.
"'The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an infinite deal of wit and humour; but wanted judgment, and had no virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond measure, and implacable in his resentments; these qualities were the effects or different faces of his pride; which, whenever he pleased to lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule; but, by his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: running into the wildest extravagances and pushing his debaucheries to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject had at that time in England; yet his profuseness made him always necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, and proud without magnanimity; and though he did not want some bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor anything so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking.'"
"Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "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,
With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
The George and Garter, dangling from that bed,