THE GLORY OF KNOLE
Knole most famous in Kent still appears,
Where mansions surveyed for a thousand long years,
In whose domes mighty monarchs might dwell,
Where five hundred rooms are, as Boswell[[11]] can tell!
I do not think that Durfey can have been very greatly esteemed by his patron, nor yet on very intimate terms with him, but kept rather, contemptuously, as permanent rhymester to Dorset’s little court, for another picture, small, obscure, but entertainingly intimate, shows him in humble company in the Steward’s Room with Lowry, the Steward; George Allan, a clothier; Mother Moss, whoever she may have been; Maximilian Buck, the chaplain; and one Jack Randall. His name is certainly not one of the most illustrious among the many poets and writers represented on the walls of the Poets’ Parlour—Edmund Waller, Matthew Prior, Thomas Flattman, John Dryden, William Congreve, William Wycherley, Thomas Otway, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Samuel Butler, Abraham Cowley, Nicholas Rowe, William Cartwright, Sir Kenelm Digby, Alexander Pope. And with this last name I come to the final tribute paid to the splendid Dorset—Pope’s epitaph upon his monument in the Sackville chapel at Withyham:
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muses’ pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died.
The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state: