[Footnote 2: Memoires ubi supra.]
[Footnote 3: Memoirs ubi supra.]
[Footnote 4: A noted boxer.]
[Footnote 5: A Turk, famous for his performances on a wire, after the manner of rope-dancers.]
* * * * *
Sir GEORGE ETHEREGE,
A Celebrated wit in the reign of Charles and James II. He is said to have been descended of an ancient family of Oxfordshire, and born about the year 1636; it is thought he had some part of his education at the university of Cambridge, but in his younger years he travelled into France, and consequently made no long stay at the university. Upon his return, he, for some time, studied the Municipal Law at one of the Inns of Court, in which, it seems, he made but little progress, and like other men of sprightly genius, abandoned it for pleasure, and the gayer accomplishments.
In the year 1664 the town was obliged with his first performance for the stage, entitled the Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, the writing whereof brought him acquainted, as he himself informed us, with the earl of Dorset, to whom it is by the author dedicated. The fame of this play, together with his easy, unreserved conversation, and happy address, rendered him a favourite with the leading wits, such as the duke of Buckingham, Sir Charles Sedley, the earl of Rochester, Sir Car Scroop. Being animated by this encouragement, in 1668, he brought another comedy upon the stage, entitled She Would if She Could; which gained him no less applause, and it was expected, that by the continuance of his studies, he would polish and enliven the theatrical taste, and be no less constant in such entertainments, than the most assiduous of his cotemporaries, but he was too much addicted to pleasure, and being impelled by no necessity, he neglected the stage, and never writ, till he was forced to it, by the importunity of his friends. In 1676, his last comedy called the Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, came on the stage, with the most extravagant success; he was then a servant to the beautiful duchess of York, of whom Dryden has this very singular expression, 'that he does not think, that at the general resurrection, she can be made to look more charming than now.' Sir George dedicates this play to his Royal Mistress, with the most courtly turns of compliment. In this play he is said to have drawn, or to use the modern cant, taken off, some of the cotemporary coxcombs; and Mr. Dryden, in an Epilogue to it, has endeavoured to remove the suspicion of personal satire, and says, that the character of Flutter is meant to ridicule none in particular, but the whole fraternity of finished fops, the idolaters of new fashions.
His words are,
True fops help nature's work, and go to school,
To file and finish God Almighty's fool:
Yet none Sir Fopling, him, or him, can call,
He's Knight o'th' Shire, and represents you all.