joyous temper served to deaden his powerful intellect; or, rather, his
intellect was now lost in the sensual stream through which it flowed.
Ever in pursuit of some new face, his schemes and counterschemes were
limited to cheat a husband or deceive a wife; and dexterous and
successful no doubt they were. But a vice always more destructive
than the love of women began also to reign over him,--namely, the
intemperance of the table. The fastidious and graceful epicurism of
the early Normans, inclined to dainties but abhorring excess, and
regarding with astonished disdain the heavy meals and deep draughts of
the Saxon, had long ceased to characterize the offspring of that
noblest of all noble races. Warwick, whose stately manliness was
disgusted with whatever savoured of effeminacy or debauch, used to
declare that he would rather fight fifty battles for Edward IV. than
once sup with him! Feasts were prolonged for hours, and the banquets
of this king of the Middle Ages almost resembled those of the later
Roman emperors. The Lord Montagu did not share the abstemiousness of
his brother of Warwick. He was, next to Hastings, the king's chosen
and most favourite companion. He ate almost as much as the king, and
drank very little less. Of few courtiers could the same be said!
Over the lavish profligacy and excess of the court, however, a veil
dazzling to the young and high-spirited was thrown. Edward was
thoroughly the cavalier, deeply imbued with the romance of chivalry,
and, while making the absolute woman his plaything, always treated the
ideal woman as a goddess. A refined gallantry, a deferential courtesy
to dame and demoiselle, united the language of an Amadis with the
licentiousness of a Gaolor; and a far more alluring contrast than the
court of Charles II. presented to the grim Commonwealth seduced the
vulgar in that of this most brave and most beautiful prince, when
compared with the mournful and lugubrious circles in which Henry VI.
had reigned and prayed. Edward himself, too, it was so impossible to