Sir John Reresby
pronounced him 'to be the finest gentleman he ever saw.' 'He was born,'
Madame Dunois declared, 'for gallantry and magnificence.' His wit was
faultless, but his manners engaging; yet his sallies often descended
into buffoonery, and he spared no one in his merry moods. One evening a
play of Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth this
line--
'My wound is great because it is so small!'
She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically distressed.
Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He rose, all eyes were fixed
upon a face well known in all gay assemblies, in a tone of burlesque he
answered--
'Then 'twould be greater were it none at all.'
Instantly the audience laughed at the Duke's tone of ridicule, and the
poor woman was hissed off the stage.
The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts; whilst Lord
Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule: nothing could
withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gallery at Whitehall, but in
the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be seen, in all the radiance
of his matured beauty. His face was long and oval, with sleepy, yet
glistening eyes, over which large arched eyebrows seemed to contract a
brow on which the curls of a massive wig (which fell almost to his
shoulders) hung low.
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