CHAPTER I.

In the scantily furnished hall of a fine old Jacobean mansion, which had been the scene of much dissipation under the ownership of a notoriously profligate courtier in the reign of Charles II., the daylight was failing fast in a sunless sunset on a December afternoon; although the darkness was slightly delayed by the glimmer from the white ground and the snow-laden trees outside the lozenge-paned windows. If the outside world looked dreary, the hall within was also somewhat depressing. Except for the blazing logs in the large grate, and their reflections upon the polished oak of the floor and of the panelled walls, everything seemed to hint at want rather than wealth. Evidences of former grandeur in the shape of rich mouldings and emblazoned coats of arms showed but too plainly by their cracked and faded condition that money was far from plentiful : the best of the pictures which formerly graced the walls had been sold to modern millionaires; and the absence of modern luxuries eloquently bespoke the poverty of the inmates.

Yet the house had never gone out of the family

that had built it in the reign of James I. That family had clung resolutely to the old home and to at least a portion of the old estate; although it had been heavily impoverished, first by its loyalty in the days of Charles I., and secondly by its extravagance in those of Charles II.; nor had it done much to revive its fortunes by judicious, loveless marriages with rich heiresses, in the reigns intervening between those of the Stuart Kings and that of King Edward VII.

A visitor, who had been out for a long tramp in the snow, was lounging, as best he could, in a high, unstuffed arm-chair by the handsome fireplace, and, in the half day-light, half fire-light, he tried to people the old hall, in his imagination, with the ghosts of the gay ladies and smartly dressed courtiers of the period in which the house had been seen in its most wanton splendour, namely the reign of Charles II. The day-dreamer was sufficiently fatigued and had been long enough exposed to the cold, frosty air to make rest and warmth enjoyable ; he was drowsy, yet hindered from actual sleep by the slight uneasiness of the hard-seated straightbacked arm-chair; and to his free fancy smiling gallants, in periwigs, doublets, and slashed jackets, accompanied by ringletted ladies in dresses embroidered with gold and silver, were grouped about in the hall, the brilliant hues of the silks, satins and velvets of both sexes being thrown into relief by the dark oak background, while men-servants in gay

liveries were carrying in trays laden with fruits of rich colours and flagons and cups of silver and of gold.

This pleasant vision was dispelled and the dreamer was roused from his reverie by the entrance of a female servant-butlers and footmen were things of the past in this impoverished house-bringing in that enemy to romance, the paraffin lamp; and the occupant of the chair rose slowly from his seat and strolled round the hall.

Pausing before a book-case, he took down a volume from its shelves. It was The Poems of Lord Rochester. Turning over its leaves, the reader was transported from dreamland to the somewhat, if little, more substantial foothold of letters; yet in the same period, in the same company, and with almost as much freedom to the imagination, as in his late semi-sleepy fantasies. Laying Rochester on one side, for a more careful reading later on, he took down another book, then another, then others: each proving to be a collection of poems or plays by one or other of the courtiers of Charles II.

So engrossed was the reader that tea and his hostess entering the hall escaped his notice.

"Upon what are you so intent?" asked the sole heiress of an estate mortgaged to the hilt, and of a fine old house rapidly falling into decay for want of repair.

Rochester and other literary rakes of the court of Charles II.," replied her guest.

"Ah!" said the hostess, "I am still burdened

by their rakishness; and literature is still burdened by their doggerel."

During the immediately succeeding days, thaw and storm followed the frost and snow. While the pattering rain was driven by the fierce wind against the windows-and there are no windows that seem so sensitive to wind and to rain as the diminutive leaden-cased panes of Jacobean houses-the visitor's day-dream and his casual handling of the works of Rochester and other literary rakes of the court of Charles II. led him to begin the studies which resulted in the production of the present volume.

The word Rake is said by Dr. Johnson to be derived from the Dutch word Rekel, meaning "a worthless cur dog"; and worthless dogs indeed were some of the literary courtiers of Charles II., a few of whom it is now proposed to notice. Pope asserted that "every woman is at heart a rake"; and, if ever the word rake was applicable to females, it was eminently applicable to many of the beauties at the court of Charles II.; but, although women will figure to a large extent in these pages, the word rake will only be used here in the masculine gender.

A great deal that is bad and very little that is good will have to be said of Rochester and his companions; it will be well, therefore, to begin by recalling to our memories the disadvantages of the period which produced them, and, on account of those disadvantages, to be prepared to make for them such excuses as we can.

The reign of Charles II. opened at a time of violent reaction. Eleven years earlier the King of England had been beheaded: meanwhile the Commonwealth had ruled the country with a straitlacedness hitherto unknown to it, and a strictness as unnatural as it was unwholesome had immediately followed the inevitable laxity of civil war.

The previous century had been largely spent in ridding England of its old religion: its new religion was fresh from the melting-pot and, if moulded, was still in the rough. Its people, therefore, as a whole, were uncontrolled by any very definite faith, and altruism, as a creed and a code of morals, had not then been discovered. Chivalry was a thing of the past, and the gentleman-at least in the modern sense of the term-had not yet been invented.

The spirit of the people, and especially of the rich, at the Restoration, was much the same as that of children when let out of school. Under the Commonwealth the theatres had been closed and the actors had been whipped. Nasal psalm-singing had supplanted secular music, sombre garments had taken the place of the gay colours of the Cavaliers, and an overstrained propriety had obliterated every trace of the fun and the frolic of the reigns of James and Charles. The prim Puritans had taken their revenge without mercy upon the pleasure-loving Cavaliers, and now that the court was restored, the Cavaliers, if Cavaliers they could still be called, were in a hurry, not so much to be revenged in their turn