Lord Rochester’s frolics in the character of a mountebank are well known, and the speech which he made upon the occasion of his first turning itinerant doctor, has been often printed; there is in it a true spirit of satire, and a keenness of lampoon, which is very much in the character of his lordship, who had certainly an original turn for invective and satirical composition.

We shall give the following short extract from this celebrated speech, in which his lordship’s wit appears pretty conspicuous.

“If I appear (says Alexander Bendo) to any one like a counterfeit, even for the sake of that chiefly ought I to be construed a true man, who is the counterfeit’s example, his original, and that which he employs his industry and pains to imitate and copy.  Is it therefore my fault if the cheat, by his wit and endeavours, makes himself so like me, that consequently I cannot avoid resembling him?  Consider, pray, the valiant and the coward, the wealthy merchant and the bankrupt; the politician and the fool; they are the same in many things, and differ but in one alone.  The valiant man holds up his hand, looks confidently round about him, wears a sword, courts a lord’s wife, and owns it; so does the coward.  One only point of honour, and that’s courage, which (like false metal, one only trial can discover) makes the distinction.  The bankrupt walks the exchange, buys bargains, draws bills, and accepts them with the richest, whilst paper and credit are current coin; that which makes the difference is real cash, a great defect indeed, and yet but one, and that the last found out, and still till then the least perceived.—­Now for the politician; he is a grave, diliberating, close, prying man:  Pray are there not grave, deliberating, close, prying fools?  If therefore the difference betwixt all these (tho’ infinite in effect) be so nice in all appearance, will you yet expect it should be otherwise between the false physician, astrologer, &c. and the true?  The first calls himself learned doctor, sends forth his bills, gives physic and council, tells, and foretells; the other is bound to do just as much.  It is only your experience must distinguish betwixt them, to which I willingly submit myself.”

When lord Rochester was restored again to the favour of King Charles ii, he continued the same extravagant pursuits of pleasure, and would even use freedoms with that Prince, whom he had before so much offended; for his satire knew no bounds, his invention was lively, and his execution sharp.

He is supposed to have contrived with one of Charles’s mistress’s the following stratagem to cure that monarch of the nocturnal rambles to which he addicted himself.  He agreed to go out one night with him to visit a celebrated house of intrigue, where he told his Majesty the finest women in England were to be found.  The King made no scruple to assume his usual disguise and accompany him, and while he was engaged with one of the ladies of pleasure, being