With virtues only proper to the gown,’ etc. etc.
There spoke the Poet-Laureate, and woe indeed to the man who had such a poet as Dryden for his censor! Yet for all this abuse which he had written to order, Dryden could not help bearing testimony as follows:—
‘Yet fame deserved, no memory can grudge,
The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge;
In Israel’s court ne’er sate an Abithin
With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress,
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.’
Lord Shaftesbury was kind and charitable to the poor in his neighbourhood, and was very hospitable. In 1669, Cosimo de’ Medici, being in England, went to St. Giles’s, and was so much pleased with his reception, that he kept up a correspondence with his English friend, and sent him annually a present of Tuscan wine. It has been adduced by some, in evidence of his immorality, that on one occasion, while still in favour with Charles, the King said to him, ‘I believe, Shaftesbury, you are the greatest profligate in England.’ The Earl bowed low, and replied, ‘For a subject, sire, I believe I am.’ It would be hard to condemn a man on the testimony of a repartee.