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CHARLES SACKVILLE,

EARL of DORSET.

Drawn from the Original at Knowle by 0.Humphry Esq. RA.

Pub. May 20.1806 by J. Scott. 442 Strand.

CHARLES SACKVILLE,

EARL OF DORSET.2

If one turns to the authors of the last age for the character of this lord, one meets with nothing but encomiums on his wit and good nature. 3 He was the finest gentleman in the voluptuous court of Charles the second, and in the gloomy one of King William. He had as much wit as his first master, or his

Having omitted him in his place, as being the author only of speeches and letters, I shall refer my readers for an account of another ornament of this family, Edward, earl of Dorset, to Anthony Wood, who, vol. ii. p. 155., mentions several speeches and letters of state of this lord in print; and whose own manly and spirited account of his duel with the lord Bruce is sufficiently known. [Vid. article of this earl, vol.iii. p. 45.]

[Rymer, in 1693, dedicated his "Short View of Tragedy," to Charles, earl of Dorset, and thus addressed him: "Now, my lord, that the muses' commonweal is become your province; what may we not expect? This I say, not with intent to apply that of Quintilian, or Augustus Cæsar, parum dis visum est esse eum maximum poetarum; that were a common topick: but because, when some years ago I tryed the publick with observations concerning the stage; it was principally your countenance that buoy'd me up, and supported a righteous cause against the prejudice and corruption then reigning."]

[Anthony Wood, who was one of his contemporaries, speaks of him as "a person highly esteemed for his admirable vein in

contemporaries Buckingham and Rochester, without the royal want of feeling, the duke's want of principles, or the earl's want of thought. The latter said with astonishment, "That he did not know how it was, but lord Dorset might do any thing, and yet was never to blame." 5 It was not that he was free from the failings of humanity, but he had the tenderness of it too, which made every body excuse whom every body loved; for even the asperity of his verses seems to have been forgiven to

The best good man with the worst-natur'd muse.

This line is not more familiar than lord Dorset's own poems, to all who have a taste for the genteelest beauties of natural and easy verse, or than his lordship's own bon-mots, of which I cannot help repeating one of singular humour. Lord Craven was a proverb for officious whispers to men in power: on lord Dorset's promotion, king Charles having seen lord Craven pay his usual tribute to him, asked the former what the latter had been saying;

poetry, and other polite learning, as several things of his composition, while lord Buckhurst, show." Athenæ, vol.i. col. 348.]

[See Prior's Dedication of his poems to Lionel, earl of Dorset and Middlesex.]

the earl replied gravely, "Sir, my lord Craven did me the honour to whisper, but I did not think it good manners to listen." When he was dying, Congreve, who had been to visit him, being asked how he had left him, replied, "Faith, he slabbers more wit than other people have in their best health." His lordship wrote nothing but small copies of verses, most of which have been collected in the late editions of our Minor Poets; and with the duke of Buckingham's works are printed two of lord Dorset's poems, and in Prior's posthumous works is one, called

"The antiquated Coquet."

"A Song :" published in the first volume of a collection called the Sports of the Muses, printed in 1752.

His lordship and Waller are said to have assisted Mrs. Catharine Philips in her translation of Corneille's Pompey.

[This celebrated wit was descended in a direct line from Thomas, first earl of Dorset, one of the earliest

Vol. ii. p. 14, and 56.

7 Vol. i. p. 170. [In the State Poems, vol. i. is the "Duel of the Crabs," by the earl of Dorset and H. Saville; occasioned by the Duel of the Stags, by sir Robert Howard.]

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ornaments to the poetry of his country, and one of the brightest honours to its statists." He was born in 1637, and after completing his education under a private tutor, travelled into Italy, and returned to England a little before the revolution. He shone in the house of commons, and was caressed by Charles the second, but undertook no public employment, says Dr. Johnson, being too eager after the riotous and licentious pleasures which young men of high rank who aspire to be thought wits, imagine themselves entitled to indulge. He was in truth, adds the New Biog. Dict., like Villiers, Rochester, Sedley, &c. one of the libertines of Charles's court, and thought of nothing so much as feats of gallantry, which sometimes carried him to inexcusable excesses.2 In 1655 he attended the duke of York as a volunteer against the Dutch, and the night before the engagement with admiral Opdam is said to have composed his well-known song

"To all you Ladies now at Land,"

with equal tranquillity of mind and promptitude of wit. 3 He was soon after made a gentleman of the

8 See vol. ii. p. 128. of this work.

9 Vol. xiii. p. 176.

2 Cibber tells us, that his mind being more turned to books and to polite conversation, than to public business, he totally declined the latter, though, as bishop Burnet says, the king courted him as a favourite. Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 112.

* Prior remarks, that this act of unusual gallantry carried with it so sedate a presence of mind, that it deserves as much to be recorded as Alexander's jesting with his soldiers before he passed

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