the Court "tasted" his Hudibras; Wycherley that the town "liked" his Plain Dealer; and the Duke of Buckingham deferred to publish his Rehearsal till he was sure, as he expressed it, that my Lord Buckhurst would not "rehearse" upon him again. Nor was this all. His table was one of the last that gave us an example of the old housekeeping of an English nobleman. A freedom reigned about it which made every one of the guests think himself at home, and an abundance which showed that the master's hospitality extended to many more than those who had the honour to sit at table with himself.[1] Nor has he been less happy after death. Pope wrote his epitaph and Prior his panegyric—while Walpole and Macaulay (two men with so little apparently in common) have drawn his character with a warmth of approbation rather to have been expected from those who had shared his bounty or enjoyed his friendship, than from the colder judgments of historians looking back calmly upon personages who had long ceased to influence or affect society.
With such a man, and with Sedley's resistless wit to add fresh vigour to the conversation, it is easy to understand what Pepys had heard, that
- ↑ Prior's Dedication of his Poems to Lord Buckhurst's son, Lionel, first Duke of Dorset.
