George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, (b. 1627, d. 1688), wrote “The Rehearsal,” and the “Battle of Sedgemoor;” and adapted from Beaumont and Fletcher the comedy of “The Chances.” He also produced several religious tracts. A complete edition of his Works was published in 1775. He was the original of the famous character of Zimri in Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel.”

Personal

  He was extremely handsome, and still thought himself much more so than he really was: although he had a great deal of discernment, yet his vanity made him mistake some civilities as intended for his person, which were only bestowed on his wit and drollery.

  For his person, he was the glory of the age and any court wherever he came. Of a most graceful and charming mien and behaviour; a strong, tall and active body, all of which gave a lustre to the ornaments of his mind; of an admirable wit and excellent judgment; and had all other qualities of a gentleman. He was courteous and affable to all; of a compassionate nature; ready to forgive and forget injuries. What was said of a great man in the court of queen Elizabeth, that he used to vent his discontents at court by writing from company, and writing sonnetts, may be said of him; but when he was provoked by the malice of some and ingratitude of others, he might shew that a good natured man might have an ill natured muse…. His amours were too notorious to be concealed, and too scandalous to be justified, by saying he was bred in the latitude, of foreign climates, and now lived in a vicious age and court; where his accusers of this crime were as guilty as himself. He lay under so ill a name for this, that whenever he was shut up in his chamber, as he loved to be, nescio quid, or in his laboratory, meditans purgarum, over the fumes of charcoal, it was said to be with women. When a dirty chymist, a foxhunter, a pretender to poetry or politicks, a rehearsal should entertain him, when a messenger to summon him to council could not be admitted…. We are now come to the last scene of the tragi-comedy of his life. At the death of king Charles he went into the country to his own manor of Helmesly, the seat of the earls of Rutland in Yorkshire. King Charles was his best friend, he loved him and excused his faults. He was not so well assured of his successor. In the country he passed his time in hunting, and entertaining his friends; which he did a fortnight before his death as pleasantly and hospitably as ever he did in his life. He took cold one day after fox-hunting, by sitting on the cold ground, which cast him into an ague and fever, of which he died, after three days sickness, at a tenant’s house, Kirby more side, a lordship of his own, near Helmesly, Ap. 16, 1688; ætat. 60.

  The man was of no religion, but notoriously and professedly lustful, and yet of greater wit and parts, and sounder principles as to the interest of humanity and the common good than most lords in the court. Wherefore he countenanced fanatics and sectaries, among others, without any great suspicion, because he was known to be so far from them himself.

  He had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty of turning all things into ridicule with bold figures and natural descriptions. He had no sort of literature: only he was drawn into chymistry: and for some years he thought he was very near the finding the philosopher’s stone; which had the effect that attends on all such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it. He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship. Pleasure, frolick, or extravagant diversion was all that he laid to heart. He was true to nothing, for he was not true to himself. He had no steadiness nor conduct. He could keep no secret, nor execute any design without spoiling it. He could never fix his thoughts, nor govern his estate, tho’ then the greatest in England. He was bred about the King: and for many years he had a great ascendent over him: but he spake of him to all persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting disgrace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and mind, fortune and reputation equally. The madness of vice appeared in his person in very eminent instances; since at last he became contemptible and poor, sickly, and sunk in his parts, as well as in all other respects, so that his conversation was as much avoided as ever it had been courted.

  The finest gentleman, both for person and wit, I think I ever saw.

  He lived an unprincipled statesman, a fickle projector, a wavering friend, a steady enemy; and died a bankrupt, an outcast, and a proverb.

  As a statesman Buckingham’s only claim to respect is his consistent advocacy of religious toleration, a cause that lost more than it gained by his support. Vanity, and a restless desire for power, which he was incapable of using when obtained, were the governing motives of his political career. His servant, Brian Fairfax, who complains that the world, severe in censuring his foibles, forgot to notice his good qualities, praises his charity, courtesy, good nature, and willingness to forgive injuries. If he was extravagant, he was not covetous. While “his amours were too notorious to be concealed and too scandalous to be justified,” much was imputed to him of which he was guiltless.

The Rehearsal, 1671

  The | REHEARSAL, | As it was Acted at the | THEATRE-ROYAL. | LONDON, | Printed for Thomas Dring, at the White-Lyon, | next Chancery-lane end in Fleet-street. 1672.

  Went to see the Duke of Buckingham’s ridiculous farce and rhapsody, called “The Recital,” buffooning all plays, yet prophane enough.

  The “Rehearsal” (one of the best pieces of criticism that ever was) and Butler’s inimitable poem of Hudibras, must be quite lost to the readers in a century more, if not soon well commented. Tonson has a good key to the former, but refuses to print it, because he had been so much obliged to Dryden.

  His poems, which indeed are not very numerous, are capital in their kind; but what will immortalize his memory while our language shall be understood, or true wit relished, is his celebrated play of “The Rehearsal;”… a comedy which is so perfect a master-piece in its way, and so truly an original, that notwithstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imitation, which most kinds of excellence have excited inferior geniuses to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be attempted with regard to this, which through a century and half still stands alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written expressly to ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant to expose totally exploded.

  Five editions of “The Rehearsal” appeared in the Author’s life time. Of the second and third I cannot learn even the dates. There is a copy of the fourth, 1683, in the Bodleian. An examination of the fifth, 1687, would seem to show a general permanence of the text, but that, probably in each edition, there were here and there additions and alterations en bloc, instigated by the appearance of fresh heroic plays: some of these additions increase, with the multiplying corruption of the times, in personality and moral offensiveness. For our literary history, the first edition is sufficient.

  In describing George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, as one standing apart, we refer to the character of his solitary work, and not to his share in it; for, though passing solely under his name, there can be little doubt that it was the production of a junto of wits, of whom he was not the wittiest. Butler, Sprat, and Martin Clifford are named as his coadjutors. Buckingham, who must be credited with a keen sense of the ridiculous, had already resolved to satirize rhyming heroic plays in the person of Sir Robert Howard, when the latter’s retirement diverted the blow to Dryden, whom Butler, as we shall see, did not greatly relish, and against whose device of rhyme, Sprat, as we have seen, had committed himself by anticipation. The play chiefly selected for parody is “The Conquest of Granada,” which certainly invited it. Dryden appears as Bayes, in allusion to his laureateship; and, although his perpetual use of “egad” seems derived from the usage by one of his dramatis personæ rather than his own, we cannot doubt that his peculiarities of speech and gesture were mostly copied to the life. Within a week the town were unanimously laughing at what they had been unanimously applauding; and, scurrilous and ill-bred as the mockery of “The Rehearsal” was, it must be allowed to have been neither uncalled for nor unuseful.

General

  He had so vitiated a taste, and so vulgar a style, that, except his Pindaric on Lord Fairfax, the following [“To His Mistress”] is, perhaps, the only effort of his muse which can be selected, without conferring blame on the selector.

  There is no power in them, [Poems] though there is sometimes a facile execution.