Charles Sackville, born January 24, 1638, succeeded as sixth Earl of Dorset in 1677, having two years before been made Earl of Middlesex. He was returned by East Grinstead to the first parliament of Charles II., and became an especial favourite of the king, and notorious for his boisterous and indecorous frolics. He served under the Duke of York at sea, was employed on various missions, but could not endure the tyranny of James II., and was one of the most ardent in the cause of William. His later years were honoured by a generous patronage of Prior, Wycherley, Dryden, &c. He died at Bath, Jan. 19, 1706. He wrote lyrical and satirical pieces, but is remembered only for one bright and delightful song, “To all you Ladies now at Land.”
Personal
The Muse’s Darling, Confidant and Friend.
| Dorset, the Grace of the Courts, the Muses’ Pride, | |
| Patron of Arts, and Judge of Nature, died. | |
| The scourge of Pride, tho’ sanctify’d or great, | |
| Of Fops in Learning, and of Knaves in State: | |
| Yet soft his Nature, tho’ severe his Lay; | |
| His Anger moral, and his Wisdom gay. | |
| Blest Satirist! who touch’d the Mean so true, | |
| As show’d, Vice had his hate and pity too. | |
| Blest Courtier! who could King and Country please, | |
| Yet sacred keep his Friendships and his Ease. | |
| Blest Peer! his great Forefathers’ ev’ry grace | |
| Reflecting, and reflected in his Race; | |
| Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets shine, | |
| And Patriots still, or Poets, deck the Line. |
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 contemporaries Buckingham and Rochester, without the royal want of feeling, the duke’s want of principles, or the earl’s want of thought.
A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire Lane. In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of age, for its owner is past sixty; yet he is dressed in superb fashion; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been diligently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that of any young man present. I do not say it will be repeatable, for the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that of the Kitkat. He is Charles Sackville, famous as a companion of the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous—or, rather, infamous—for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his verses, for his patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in early life, when Lord Buckhurst.
A small poet, but a generous patron of poets.
General
To my Lord Brunker’s, by appointment, in the Piazza, in Covent-Guarding; where I occasioned much mirth with a ballet I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea to their ladies in town; saying Sir W. Pen, Sir G. Ascue, and Sir J. Lawson made them.
Yet, my Lord, you must suffer me a little to complain of you, that you too soon withdraw from us a contentment, of which we expected the continuance, because you gave it us so early. It is a revolt, without occasion, from your party, where your merits had already raised you to the highest commands, and where you have not the excuse of other men, that you have been ill-used, and therefore laid down arms. I know no other quarrel you can have to verse, than that which Spurina had to his beauty, when he tore and mangled the features of his face, only because they pleased too well the sight. It was an honour which seemed to wait for you, to lead out a new colony of writers from the mother-nation: and, upon the first spreading of your ensigns, there had been many in a readiness to have followed so fortunate a leaflet.
A person that hath been highly esteemed for his admirable vein in poetry, and other polite learning, as several things of his composition, while Lord Buckhurst, shew.
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 diis 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.
| In Dorset’s sprightly muse but touch the lyre, | |
| The smiles and graces melt in soft desire, | |
| And little loves confess their amorous fire. |
His wit was abundant, noble, bold. Wit, in most writers is like a fountain in a garden, supplied by several streams brought through artful pipes, and playing sometimes agreeably: but the Earl of Dorset’s was a source rising from the top of a mountain, which forced its own way, and, with inexhaustible supplies, delighted and enriched the country through which it passed. This extraordinary genius was accompanied with so true a judgment in all parts of fine learning, that whatever subject was before him, he discoursed as properly of it, as if the peculiar bent of his study had been applied that way; and he perfected his judgment by reading and digesting the best authors, though he quoted them very seldom…. There is a lustre in his verses, like that of the sun in Claude Loraine’s landscapes; it looks natural, and is inimitable.
Donne had no imagination, but as much wit, I think, as any writer can possibly have.—Oldham is too rough and coarse.—Rochester is the medium between him and the Earl of Dorset.—Lord Dorset is the best of all those writers.—“What! better than Lord Rochester?”—Yes, Rochester has neither so much delicacy or exactness as Lord Dorset.
From the specimens lord Dorset has given us of his poetical talents, we are inclined to wish, that affairs of higher consequence had permitted him to have dedicated more of his time to the Muses. Though some critics may alledge, that what he has given the public is rather pretty than great; and that a few pieces of a light nature do not sufficiently entitle him to the character of a first rate poet; yet, when we consider, that notwithstanding they were merely the amusement of his leisure hours, and mostly the productions of his youth, they contain marks of a genius, and as such, he is celebrated by Dryden, Prior, Congreve, Pope, &c.
He was a man whose elegance and judgment were universally confessed, and whose bounty to the learned and witty was generally known. To the indulgent affection of the publick, Lord Rochester bore ample testimony in this remark: I know not how it is, but Lord Buckhurst may do what he will, yet is never in the wrong. If such a man attempted poetry, we cannot wonder that his works were praised. Dryden, whom, if Prior tells truth, he distinguished by his beneficence, and who lavished his blandishments on those who are not known to have so well deserved them, undertaking to produce authors of our own country superior to those of antiquity, says, I would instance your Lordship in satire, and Shakespeare in tragedy. Would it be imagined that of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas? The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy. His verses to Howard shew great fertility of mind, and his “Dorinda” has been imitated by Pope.
The point and sprightliness of Dorset’s pieces entitle him to some remembrance, though they leave not a slender apology for the grovelling adulation that was shown to him by Dryden in his dedications.
The munificent earl might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor; for the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.
Plays with poetry without excess or assiduity, with a rapid pen, writing to-day a verse against “Dorinda,” to-morrow a satire against Mr. Howard, always easily and without study, like a true gentleman. He is an earl, a chamberlain, and rich; he pensions and patronises poets as he would flirts—to amuse himself, without binding himself.
It is recorded of Lord Dorset that he refused all offers of political preferment in early life that he might give his mind more thoroughly to study. He was the friend and patron of almost all the poets from Waller to Pope; Dryden adored him in one generation, and Prior in the next: nor was the courtesy that produced this affection mere idle complaisance, for no one was more fierce than he in denouncing mediocrity and literary pretension. Of all the poetical noblemen of the Restoration, Lord Dorset alone reached old age, yet with all these opportunities and all this bias toward the art, the actual verse he has left behind him is miserably small. A splendid piece of society verse, a few songs, some extremely foul and violent satires, these are all that have survived to justify in the eyes of posterity the boundless reputation of Lord Dorset.
His munificence to men of letters speaks for itself, and tempts us to accept in the main the favourable estimate of Prior, overcoloured as it is by the writer’s propensity to elegant compliment, his confessed obligations to Dorset, and its occurrence in a dedication to his son…. Prior’s eulogiums on Dorset’s native strength of understanding, though it is impossible that they should be entirely confirmed, are in no way contradicted by the few occasional poems which are all that he has left us. Not one of them is destitute of merit, and some are admirable as “the effusions of a man of wit” (in Johnson’s words), “gay, vigorous, and airy.” “To all you Ladies” is an admitted masterpiece; and the literary application of the Shakespearian phrase “alacrity in sinking” comes from the satirical epistle to the Hon. Edward Howard.
