that they never heard such a speech in their lives delivered in that manner. Progers, of the Bedchamber, swore to me afterwards before Brouncker, in the afternoon, that he did tell the King that he thought I might match the Solicitor-general. Everybody that saw me almost came to me, as Joseph Williamson and others, with such eulogies as cannot be expressed. From thence I went to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. G. Montagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips; protesting that I was another Cicero, and said, all the world said the same of me. Pepys, like Evelyn, records the daily devastation of the Great Fire, but with less minuteness. He had, however, watched the poor people lingering about their houses and furniture until the fire touched them; and then running into boats, or clambering by the waterside from one pair of stairs to another; and among other things, the poor pigeons were loth to leave their houses, and hovered about the windows and balconies till they burned their wings and fell down.' SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE. SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE (1616-1704) enjoyed in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. great notoriety as a political writer. During the Civil War, he had fought as a Royalist soldier; being captured by the Parliamentary army, he was tried and condemned to death, and lay in prison almost four years, constantly expecting to be led forth to execution. A poem ascribed to him, entitled the Liberty of the Imprisoned Royalists,' must have been written at this time. The following are a few of the stanzas: EL Beat on, proud billows! Boreas, blow! Swell, curled waves, high as Jove's roof! Your incivility shall shew That innocence is tempest-proof. Though surly Nereus frown, my thoughts are calm; Then strike, Affliction, for thy wounds are balm. That which the world miscalls a gaol, A private closet is to me, Whilst a good conscience is my bail, And innocence my liberty. Locks, bars, walls, leanness, though together met, My soul is free as ambient air, Although my baser parts be mewed; To company my solitude; And though rebellion may my body bind,' Have you not seen the nightingale And heard her tell her wonted tale, Even then her charming melody doth prove I am the bird whom they combine But though they do my corps confine, And though I'm mewed, yet I can chirp and sing, L'Estrange was at length set free, and lived in almost total obscurity till the Restoration. In 1663, he published a pamphlet, entitled Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press,' for which he was rewarded by being appointed licenser or censor of the press, and also the sole privilege of printing and publishing news. In August 1663 appeared his newspaper, "The Public Intelligencer.' From this time, till a few years before his death, he was constantly occupied in editing newspapers and writing pamphlets, mostly in behalf of the court, from which he at last received the honour of knighthood. As a controversialist, L'Estrange was bold, lively, and vigorous, but coarse, impudent, abusive, and by no means a scrupulous regarder of truth. He is known also as a translator, having produced versions of Æsop's Fables,' Seneca's 'Morals,' Cicero's 'Offices,' Erasmus's Colloquies,' Quevedo's Visions,' and the works of Josephus. In 1687, he published 'A Brief History of the Times,' relating chiefly to the Popish Plot. The following is a chapter of his life of Æsop, prefixed to the translation of the Fables': ་ · Esop's Invention to bring his Mistress back again to her Husband after she had left him. The wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy, but so proud and domineering withal, as if her fortune and her extraction had entitled her to the breeches. She was horribly bold, meddling and expensive, as that sort of women commonly are, easily put off the hooks, and monstrous hard to be pleased again; perpetually chattering at her husband, and upon all occasions of controversy threatening him to be gone. It came to this at last, that Xanthus's stock of patience being quite spent, he took up a resolution of going another way to work with her, and of trying à course of severity, since there was nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this experiment, instead of mending the matter, made it worse; for, upon harder usage, the woman grew desperate, and went away from him in earnest. She was as bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet Xanthus had a kind of hankering for her still; beside that, there was matter of interest in the case; and a pestilent tongue she had, that the poor husband dreaded above all things under the sun. But the man.was willing, however, to make the best of a bad game, and so his wits and his friends were set at work, in the fairest manner that might be, to get her home again. But there was no good to be done in it, it seems; and Xanthus was so visibly out of humour upon it, that Æsop in pure pity bethought himself immediately how to comfort him. Come, master,' says he, pluck up a good heart, for I have a project in my noddle, that shall bring my mistress to you back again, with as good a will as ever she went from you.' What does my sop. but away immediately to the market among the butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, confectioners, &c., for the best of everything that was in season. Nay, he takes private people in his way too, and chops into the very honse of his mistress's relations, as by mistake. This way of proceeding set the whole town agog to know the meaning of all this bustle; and Esop innocently told everybody that his master's wife was run away from him, and he had married another; his friends up and down were all invited to come and make merry with him, and this was to be the wedding-feast. The news flew like lightning, and happy were they that could carry the first tidings of it to the runaway lady--for everybody knew Esop to be a servant in that family. It gathered in the rolling, as all other stories do in the telling, especially where women's tongues and passions have the spreading of them. The wife, that was in her nature violent and unsteady, ordered her chariot to be made ready immediately, and away she posts back to her husband, falls upon him with outrages of looks and language; and after the easing of her mind a little-'No, Xanthus,' says she, 'do not you flatter yourself with the hopes of enjoying another woman while I am alive.' Xanthus looked upon this as one of Esop's master-pieces; and for that bout all was well again be twixt master and mistress. The Popish Plot. At the first opening of this plot, almost all people's hearts took fire at it, and nothing was heard but the bellowing of execrations and revenge against the accursed bloody Papists. It was imputed at first, and in the general, to the principles of the religion; and a Roman Catholic and a regicide were made one and the same thing. Nay, it was a saying frequent in some of our great and holy months, that they were confident there was not so much as one soul of the whole party, within his majesty's dominious, that was not either an actor in this plot, or a friend to 't. In this heat, they fell to picking up of priests and Jesuits as fast as they could catch 'em, and so went on to consult their oracles the witnesses-with all formalities of sifting and examining-upon the particulars of place, time, manner, persons, &c.; while Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests were kept warm, and ringing still of new men come in, corroborating proofs, and further discoveries, &c. Under this train and method of reasoning, the managers advanced, decently enough, to the finding out of what they themselves had laid and concerted beforehand; and, to give the devil his due, the whole story was but a farce of so many parts, and the noisy informations no more than a lesson that they had much ado to go through with, even with the help of diligent and careful tutors, and of many and many a prompter, to bring them off at a dead lift. But popery was so dreadful a thing, and the danger of the king's life aud of the Protestant religion so astonishing a surprise, that people were almost bound in duty to be inconsiderate and outrageous upon 't; and loyalty itself would have looked a little cold and indifferent if it had not been intemperate; insomuch that zeal, fierceness, and jealousy were never more excusable than upon this occasion. And now, having excellent matter to work upon, and the passions of the people already disposed for violence and tumult, there needed no more than blowing the coa of Oates's narrative, to put all into a flame; and in the meantime, all arts and accidents were improved, as well toward the entertainment of the humour, as to the kindling of it. The people were first haired out of their senses with tales and jeal ousies, and then made judges of the danger, and consequently of the remedy; which. upon the main, and briefly, came to no more than this: The plot was laid all over the three kingdoms; France, Spain, and Portugal taxed their quotas to 't; we were all to be burnt in our beds, and rise with our throats cut; and no way in the world but exclusion and union to help us. The fancy of this exclusion spread immediately, like a gangrene, over the whole body of the monarchy; and no saving the life of his majesty without cutting off every limb of the prerogative: the device of union passed insensibly into a league of conspiracy; and, instead of uniting Protestants against Papists, concluded in an association of subjects against their sovereign, confounding policy with religion. SAMUEL BUTLER. The fame of the author of 'Hudibras' led to a general desire after his death for the publication of such literary remains as he might have left behind him. Two spurious compilations were issued (1715– 1720), but out of fifty pieces thus thrust upon the world only three were genuine. At length, in 1759, two volumes of 'Remains in Verse and Prose' were published from the original MSS. which Butler had left to his friend Longueville, and which had come into the possession of Mr. R. Thyer, Manchester. The most interesting of these relics are Characters,' in prose resembling in style those of Overbury, Earle, and Hall. A Small Poet Is one that would fain make himself that which nature never meant him; like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of smal} poetry, with a very small stock and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wit; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit as the rickets, by the swelling disproportion of the joints. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him for as those that have money but seldom, are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he, when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker; and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits, as if they were but disparagements of his own; and cries down all they do, as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights, and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good, he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He bas found out a new sort of poetical Georgics a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished, the whole world has kept holiday; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses: trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes, he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means, smali poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c. that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and thorough reformations' that can happen between this and Plato's great year. A Vintner Hangs out his bush to shew he has not good wine; for that, the proverb says, needs it not. He had rather sell bad wine than good, that stands him in no more; for it makes men sooner drunk, and then they are the easier over-reckoned. By the knaveries he acts above-board, which every man sees, one may easily take a measure of those he does underground in his cellar; for he that will pick a man's pocket to his face, will not stick to use him worse in private, when he knows nothing of it. He does not only spoil and destroy his wines, but an ancient reverend proverb, with brewing and racking, that says,In vino veritas; for there is no truth in his, but all false and sophisticated; for he can counterfeit wine as cunningly as Apelles did grapes, and cheat men with it, as he did birds. He is an anti-Christian cheat, for Christ turned water into wine, and he turns wine into water. He scores all his reckonings upon two tables, made like those of the Ten Commandments, that he may be put in inind to break them as oft as possibly he can; especially that of stealing and bearing false witness against his neighbour, when he draws him bad wine, and swears it is good, and that he can take more for the pipe than the wine will yield him by the bottle-a trick that a Jesuit taught him to cheat his own conscience with. When he is found to over-reckon notoriously, he has one common evasion for all, and that is, to say it was a mistake; by which he means, that he thought they had not been sober enough to discover it; for if it had passed, there had been no error at all in the case. A Prater Is a common nuisance, and as great a grievance to those that come near him, as a pewterer is to his neighbours. His discourse is like the braying of a mortar, the more impertinent, the more voluble and loud, as a pestle makes more noise when it is rung on the sides of a mortar, than when it stamps downright, and hits upon the business. A dog that opens upon a wrong scent will do it oftener than one that never opens but upon a right. He is as long-winded as a ventiduct, that fills as fast as it empties; or a trade-wind, that blows one way for half a year together, and another as long, as if it drew in its breath for six months, and blew it out again for six more. He has no mercy on any man's ears or patience that he can get within his sphere of activity, but tortures him, as they correct boys in Scotland, by stretching their lugs without remorse. He is like an earwig, when he gets within a man's ear, he is not easily to be got out again. He is a siren to himself, and has no way to escape shipwreck but by having his mouth stopped instead of his ears. He plays with his tongue as a cat does with her tail, and is transported with the delight he gives himself of his own making. An Antiquary Is one that has his being in this age, but his life and conversation is in the days of old. He despises the present age as an innovation, and slights the future; but has a great value for that which is past and gone, like the madman that fell in love with Cleopatra. All his curiosities take place of one another according to their seniority, and he values them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years, and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. These he uses with a respect agreeable to their antiquity, and the good services they have done. He is a great time-server, but it is of time out of mind, to which he conforms exactly, but is wholly retired from the present. His days were spent and gone long before he came into the world; and since, his only business is to collect what he can out of the ruins of them. He has so strong a natural affection to anything that is old, that he may truly say to dust and worms, 'You are my father,' and to rottenness, Thou art my mother.' He has no provi dence nor foresight, for all his contemplations look backward upon the days of old, and his brains are turned with them, as if he walked backwards. He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence, of which they are made up. He esteems no customs but such as have outlived themselves, and are long since out of use; as the Catholics allow of no saints but such as are dead, and the fanatics, in opposition, of none but the living. WALTER CHARLETON. Another lively escriber of human character, who flourished in this period, was DR. WALTER CHARLETON (1619-1707), physician to Charles II. a friend of Hobbes, and for several years President of the College of Physicians in London He wrote many works on theology, natural history, natural philosophy, medicine, and antiquities; in which last department his most noted production is a treatise published in 1663, maintaining the Danish origin of Stonehenge, on |