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 Kit-kat. He is Charles Sackville,[14] 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. Rochester called him

'The best good man with the worst-natured muse;'

and Pope says he was

'The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning and of knaves in state.'

Our sailors still sing the ballad which he is said to have written on
the eve of the naval engagement between the Duke of York and Admiral
Opdam, which begins--

'To all you ladies now on land
We men at sea indite.'

With a fine classical taste and a courageous spirit, he had in early
days been guilty of as much iniquity as any of Charles's profligate
court. He was one of a band of young libertines who robbed and murdered
a poor tanner on the high-road, and were acquitted, less on account of
the poor excuse they dished up for this act than of their rank and
fashion. Such fine gentlemen could not be hanged for the sake of a mere
workman in those days--no! no! Yet he does not seem to have repented of
this transaction, for soon after he was engaged with Sedley and Ogle in