His nose was long, well formed, and flexible; his
lips thin and compressed, and defined, as the custom was, by two very
short, fine, black patches of hair, looking more like strips of
sticking-plaster than a moustache. As he made his reverence, his rich
robes fell over a faultless form. He was a beau to the very fold of the
cambric band round his throat; with long ends of the richest, closest
point that was ever rummaged out from a foreign nunnery to be placed on
the person of this sacrilegious sinner.
Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is
Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of
bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking
with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king,
himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the
courtiers are fairly in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king
with his descriptions! 'Ipswich, for instance,' he said, 'was a town
without inhabitants--a river it had without water--streets without
names; and it was a place where asses wore boots:' alluding to the
asses, when employed in rolling Lord Hereford's bowling-green, having
boots on their feet to prevent their injuring the turf.
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