THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.
MEMOIRS OF SIR RALPH ESHER,
By Leigh Hunt, Esq.
These volumes exhibit a lively picture of the gayest and most profligate periods of the history of the English Court. The writer, Sir Ralph Esher, is an adventurer in the Court of our Second Charles, where he is introduced by luckily securing a feather that escapes from the hat of one of the ladies of the Court on horseback. The work opens with some account of the writer's family, of some antiquity, in the county of Surrey, with a few delightful sketches of the great men of the period. Witness this slight outline of
Cowley.
"I rode one day on purpose to see Cooper's Hill, because Mr. Denham had written a poem upon it; and hearing that Cowley was coming to see Mr. Evelyn at Wootton, I went there and waited all the morning, till I saw him arrive. He had a book in his hand, with his finger between the leaves, as if he had been reading. He was a fleshy, heavy man, not looking in good health, and had something of a stare in his eye. Before he entered the gate, he stooped down to pinch the cheeks of some little children at play; and afterwards, when I heard he was put in prison, I could not, for the life of me, persuade myself that he deserved it."
The third chapter describes one of Charles's visits to Durdans, a rural retreat built with materials from Nonsuch in the vicinity. The opening has all the summer freshness of a race-day morning at Epsom:
"The bells awoke me in the morning, ringing a merry peal. When the wind died, they seemed to be calling towards London; when it rose again, they poured their merriment through the town, as if telling us that the King was coming. I got up, and went into the street, where the people were having their breakfasts under the trees, as the gentry do in the time of the races. It was a very animated scene. The morning was brilliant. A fine air tempered the coming warmth. The tables set out with creams and cakes under the trees, had a pretty country look, though the place was crowded. Everybody was laughing, chattering, and expecting; and the lasses, in their boddices and white sleeves, reminded me of Miss Warmestre."
The arrival of the King and his mistress is beautifully told, as are the costumes described, nay, coloured, for they are like highly-finished portraits.