'
Notwithstanding Blood's outrages--the slightest penalty for which in
our days would have been penal servitude for life--Evelyn met him, not
long afterwards, at Lord Clifford's, at dinner, when De Grammont and
other French noblemen were entertained. 'The man,' says Evelyn, 'had not
only a daring, but a villanous, unmerciful look, a false countenance;
but very well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating.'
Early in 1662, the Duke of Buckingham had been engaged in practices
against the court: he had disguised deep designs by affecting the mere
man of pleasure. Never was there such splendour as at Wallingford
House--such wit and gallantry; such perfect good breeding; such
apparently openhanded hospitality. At those splendid banquets, John
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 'a man whom the Muses were fond to inspire,
but ashamed to avow,' showed his 'beautiful face,' as it was called; and
chimed in with that wit for which the age was famous. The frequenters at
Wallingford House gloried in their indelicacy. 'One is amazed,' Horace
Walpole observes, 'at hearing the age of Charles II. called polite. The
Puritans have affected to call everything by a Scripture' name; the new
comers affected to call everything by its right name;
'As if preposterously they would confess
A forced hypocrisy in wickedness.
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