He

At last, being provoked by Mr. Crofts, a young gentleman of family, a challenge ensued, and Mr. Crofts coming to the rendezvous armed only with a squirt, the little creature was so enraged, that a real duel ensued, and the appointment being on horseback, with pistols, to put them more on a level, Jeffery, with the first fire, shot his antagonist dead. This happened in France, whither he had attended his mistress in her troubles. was again taken prisoner by a Turkish rover, and sold into Barbary. Probably, however, he did not long remain in slavery; for, at the beginning of the civil wars, he was made a captain in the royal army; and, in 1644, attended the queen to France, where he remained till the restoration. At length, upon the suspicion of his being privy to the Popish plot, he was taken up, in 1682, and confined in the Gate-house, Westminster; where he ended his life, in the sixty-third year of his age.t

his height was seven feet and a half.-Pennant's London, p. 219.

+ Walpole's Anec. Paint. v. ii. p. 14.

To these particulars of little Jeffery's history, Mr. Granger adds, that the king's gigantic porter once drew him out of his pocket, in a masque at court, to the surprise of all the spectators: and that, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford are still preserved his waistcoat, breeches, and stockings. The former of blue satin, slashed, and ornamented with pinked white silk. The two latter are of one piece of blue satin.*

* Biog. Hist. vol. iii. page 246. A very curious historical account of two of the characters in "Peveril of the Peak," William and Edward Christian, will be found in "The Literary Gazettes" of April and May, 1823-a periodical publication, by the bye, well deserving the popularity it enjoys, for the variety and general interest of its contents; the ability of its criticisms on the lighter literature of the age; and, above all, for the spirit of candour, and good-humour, and good sense, in which it exercises its delicate functions.

Miscellaneous Illustrations.

THE COURT OF CHARLES THE SECOND.

Dr. Joseph Warton, in his remarks on those lines of Pope, in his "Essay on Criticism,'

"When love was all an easy monarch's care,
"Seldom at council, never in a war,"

observes, that the dissolute reign of Charles the Second justly deserved the satirical proscription in this passage. Under the notion of laughing at the absurd austerities of the Puritans, it became the mode to run into the contrary extreme, and to ridicule real religion and unaffected virtue.* The king, during

* "The merry monarch" and his courtiers seem to have had a peculiar zest for any joke against religion, or its ministers. Buckingham, whose impiety was

his exile, had seen and admired the splendour of the court of Louis XIV., and endeavoured to introduce the same luxury into the English court. It was not the adoption or imitation, however, of the manners of the French capital

fully equal to his wit, frequently played the first fiddle upon these facetious occasions. "It is certain," says Mr. Granger, "from what Lord Clarendon tells us, that he often diverted himself with the preachers at court. The following story was told us as a fact by Mr. Dibdin, an intimate friend of Mr. Prior: a young divine, of great modesty, who preached before the king on Psalm cxxxix. 13, 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made,' was the innocent occasion of much mirth in the royal chapel. This young man, who is supposed to have been in a perspiration, more from apprehension than the warmth of the season, happened, before he named his text, to wipe his face with one of his hands, on which was a new glove, and with the dye of it unluckily blacked himself. The Duke of Buckingham, on comparing the words of the text with the figure of the preacher, was instantly seized with a fit of laughter, in which he was followed by Sir Henry Bennet, and several other courtiers; nor was the king himself, who thoroughly enjoyed a joke of this kind, able to keep his countenance."Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. iv. p. 148, edit. 1824.

Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. i. page 153.

alone, that rendered the court of Charles the Second such a scene of vice as can hardly be conceived by an Englishman, who, through the long reign of our late venerable monarch, saw nothing in the conduct of the sovereign, or about his throne, but the appearance of virtue, sobriety, and decorum: the depraved morals of Charles and his courtiers date long before his restoration to his paternal crown. From the very commencement of the disturbances, which resulted in the decapitation of Charles the First, the manners of the cavaliers had been characterized by an awful profligacy, adopted as a mark of distinction between themselves and the precise, formal, and austere commonwealth's men—their opponents in the terrible struggle. There was no height of profaneness to which they did not aspire, in order to evince their loyalty; no excess of vice which they did not master, that they might shew their contempt and detestation of the character and manners of the Puritans. Overcome, at length, and dispersed, they carried their habits of wickedness into the places of their exile; and when, by