Volume II Part 28 (1/2)
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laught himself from court, then sought relief, By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief.
Thus wicked, but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of that was left.
It is allowed by the severest enemies of this n.o.bleman, that he had a great share of vivacity, and quickness of parts, which were particularly turned to ridicule; but while he has been celebrated as a wit, all men are silent as to other virtues, for it is no where recorded, that he ever performed one generous disinterested action in his whole life; he relieved no distressed merit; he never shared the blessing of the widow and fatherless, and as he lived a profligate, he died in misery, a by-word and a jest, unpitied and unmourned.
He died April 16, 1687, Mr. Wood says, at his house in Yorks.h.i.+re, but Mr. Pope informs us, that he died at an inn in that county, in very mean circ.u.mstances. In his Epistle to lord Bathurst, he draws the following affecting picture of this man, who had possessed an estate of near 50,000 l. per annum, expiring,
In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw, With tape-ty'd curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow, strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies--alas! how chang'd from him That life of pleasure, and that foul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bow'r of wanton Shrewsbury[3] and love; Or just as gay in council, in a ring Of mimick'd statesmen and their merry king.
No wit to flatter left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.
His grace's fate, sage Cutler could foresee, And well (he thought) advised him, 'live like me.'
As well, his grace replied, 'like you, Sir John!
That I can do, when all I have is gone:'
Besides the celebrated Comedy of the Rehearsal, the duke wrote the following pieces;
1. An Epitaph on Thomas, Lord Fairfax, which has been often reprinted.
2. A Short Discourse upon the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion or Wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d. This Piece met with many Answers, to which, the Duke wrote Replies.
3. A Demonstration of the above Duty.
4. Several Poems, particularly, Advice to a Painter to draw my Lord Arlington. Timon, a Satire on several Plays, in which he was a.s.sisted by the Earl of Rochester; a Consolatory Epistle to Julian Secretary to the Muses; upon the Monument; upon the Installment of the Duke of Newcastle; the Rump-Parliament, a Satire; the Mistress; the Lost Mistress; a Description of Fortune.
5. Several Speeches.
Footnotes: 1. B. vi. vol. ii. p. 347.
2. T.C.
3. The countess of Shrewsbury, a woman abandoned to gallantries. The earl her husband was killed by the duke of Buckingham; and it has been said that, during the combat, she held the duke's horses in the habit of a page.
MATTHEW SMITH, Esquire.
_(The following Account of this Gentleman came to our Hands too late to be inserted in the Chronological Series.)_
This gentleman was the son of John Smith, an eminent Merchant at Knaresborough in the county of York, and descended from an ancient family of that name, seated at West-Herrington and Moreton House in the county pal. of Durham. Vide Philpot's Visitation of Durham, in the Heralds Office, page 141.
He was a Barrister at Law, of the Inner-Temple, and appointed one of the council in the North, the fifteenth of King Charles I. he being a Loyalist, and in great esteem for his eminence and learning in his profession; as still further appears by his valuable Annotations on Littleton's Tenures he left behind him in ma.n.u.script. He also wrote some pieces of poetry, and is the author of two dramatical performances.
1. The Country Squire, or the Merry Mountebank, a Ballad Opera of one Act.