The serious impressions which his escape from the plague had awakened were not of any long continuance. If the Queen, with her deeper-rooted religious principles, and more habitual rigour of morality, had been obliged to adapt herself to the licentiousness with which she was surrounded, it was not likely that a youth of ardent passions would be enabled to resist the whirl of court dissipation, that brought every thing within its vortex. It was as difficult to avoid the contagion of the moral as of the physical plague; and Jocelyn, who had been assailed by the one, was now as deeply tainted by the other infection,—of which he was indeed peculiarly susceptible from the state of his feelings. Spite of all his worldly wisdom and cold prudence, his bosom retained enough of its attachment to Julia to render him not only indifferent to every other beauty, but dissatisfied with himself and out of humour with the world; a predicament in which he flew to the common but vain expedient of endeavouring to derive from the senses that pleasure which was denied to the heart, by making libertinism a substitute for love. So far as licentious companions could advance this hopeful project, he had every assistance that could be desired; for he was now on intimate terms with the Duke of Buckingham; his former friendship with Rochester and the Duke of Monmouth was cemented by community of dissipation; and Sedley, Etherege, and Killigrew were received into the number of his intimates.

Under such auspices he plunged into all the dissolute courses of the time, with the ignorance as well as with the zeal of a novice. He gave suppers, and lived upon

a scale of expenditure that speedily involved him in embarrassment; he lounged about Covent Garden; he haunted the taverns and the play-houses; he took one of the actresses of the Duke's theatre under his special protection, and furnished apartments for her opposite to those of Moll Davies, the King's mistress, in Suffolk Street. But this liaison was speedily dissolved. His friend, Lord Rochester, introduced himself into the house, under the disguise of the lady's cousin, a country bumpkin from Yorkshire, which he performed so admirably, that although he dined with Jocelyn, and sang several clownish songs, he remained undiscovered, and was allowed to accompany his pretended relation to the Mulberry Garden, whence, instead of restoring her to Suffolk-street, he carried her off in triumph to his own house at Westminster; not that he had any attachment to the woman, whom he had presently spurned away from him again; but that he enjoyed the joke, was proud of his powers of mimicry, and delighted in an opportunity of outwitting and laughing at a friend. In further proof that he was a greenhorn in the practices of a modish life, Jocelyn was weak enough to take his friend's behaviour in dudgeon, and actually to call. upon him for satisfaction, an instance of simplicity at which his lordship laughed most heartily. «My dear Faunus," he exclaimed, «surely it were better to sing Pepys's song of 'Beauty, retire!' and give the Fair Inconstant to the winds, than to be tragical and heroical about a trull. Because you have lost your wench, you need not lose your temper, still less your friend, least of all your own life. Fight for a petticoat! Fie, fie! you

should know better. If the King cannot keep his mistresses to himself, why should the Queen's private secretary expect to do so? As for me, I am no fighter. I am a coward upon principle, as I told you when I ran away with my wife. There is nothing so absurdly overrated as personal courage, than which I positively know not a more common-place and vulgar quality. Fools and barbarians invariably possess it in exact proportion to their ignorance and ferocity, and, after all, they are eclipsed by the brutes, because they are still more irrational. Psha!-away with grim looks, my man of the woods, and let us be merry. How say you? shall we scour the quarters, and call upon Pez Hughes, Nell Gwyn, and Mrs Knight, visit the Italian Puppet, or Polichinello in Moorfields,—hie to St James's Park to see the pelican toss up the flat-fish and catch them, - take wine at the Rhenish, tipple sack at the Heaven Tavern, or burnt brandy at the Devil,-punch at the St John's Head, or buttered ale at Wood's in the Pall-mall. look in at either of the theatres,-play a game at tennis, cards, or dice,-find our way to Clerkenwell, and talk philosophy with the crazy Duchess of Newcastle, -or walk to Barn-elms and discuss poetry and botany with Abraham Cowley?"

Here was a copious choice of recreations; but Jocelyn, not being in a mood to partake of any, simply declared, that he should spend the morning at home, and that he was so far convinced by his lordship's raillery, as to say, that he forgave him, if he could forgive himself.

“Then never was any reconciliation more complete,»

cried Rochester; «for I not only forgive myself, but applaud myself to the very skies. Fare thee well, my Faunus! Since thou wilt not join my rambles, I will return to end them here; and so I may sing to thee, as the Syren did to Ulysses, '—

Jocelyn consoled himself for his inconstant Perdita, by installing another in the lodgings in Suffolk-street, but he was doomed to be unfortunate in his connexions of this nature. His second inamorata, a dancer at the King's Theatre, happened to hit the fancy of the Duke of Monmouth; and, as a rich peer is always preferable to a poor commoner, she only remained with her present protector till she had extorted from him a valuable diamond necklace, when she decamped, and was admitted into his Grace's establishment. Both the friends who had thus eased him of his Dulcineas had wives of their own, to whom they were under the greatest obligations; for both had married large heiresses, who were, at the same time, virtuous and accomplished women. Jocelyn was so shocked that he became misanthropical, and, with the usual perverse logic that makes the world at large responsible for the mistakes of the individual, he pronounced all women to be false, and all friends to be treacherous, because he had chosen his specimens of each among wantons and profligates. By an equal dis

In Hymen's Triumph, << a Pastoral Tragi-comedie," by Daniel, 4to. 1623.

tortion of reason, he persuaded himself that he had a right to retaliate upon others the wrongs he had received from his associates, and he accordingly became a convert to the principle, that in love, as in war, all stratagems are fair. Walton had disappeared from the time he had lent him the money; the salary of his office was quite inadequate to his expenditure; he was exposed to the assaults of duns, and even to the pursuit of bailiffs, and thus nothing was wanting to constitute him a fine gentleman, and a man of fashion, as those characters were understood and practised at the licentious court of Charles II.

In the midst of all this dissipation, he had in vain endeavoured to banish Julia's image from his heart. His experiment had utterly failed. The satiety and disgust which, in ingenuous minds, so quickly follows a course of sensual indulgence, began to annoy him with their conpunctious visitings; he discovered that he had been foolish as well as criminal; and perhaps felt more vexed at the error of his judgment, than at all his deviations from morality. In the yearnings of his unsatisfied heart, he betook himself, one morning, to Alderman Staunton's, in the City, without any definite object, but in the vague hope that he might gather some tidings, he knew not what, relative to Julia. In this expectation he was disappointed. The merchant appeared to be frightened at the very idea of his having any correspondence with the inmates of Haelbeck, or knowledge of their proceedings; most earnestly requesting, that his name might never be coupled with that of the unfortunate exile. He turned the subject as