Some years after he travelled to Rome, where he grew familiar with the most valuable remains of antiquity, applying himself particularly to the knowledge of medals, which he gained in great perfection, and spoke Italian with so much grace and fluency, that he was frequently mistaken there for a native.  He returned to England upon the restoration of King Charles the IId, and was made captain of the band of pensioners, an honour which tempted him to some extravagancies.  In the gaieties of that age (says Fenton) he was tempted to indulge a violent passion for gaming, by which he frequently hazarded his life in duels, and exceeded the bounds of a moderate fortune.  This was the fate of many other men whose genius was of no other advantage to them, than that it recommended them to employments, or to distinction, by which the temptations to vice were multiplied, and their parts became soon of no other use, than that of enabling them to succeed in debauchery.

A dispute about part of his estate, obliging him to return to Ireland, he resigned his post, and upon his arrival at Dublin, was made captain of the guards to the duke of Ormond.

When he was at Dublin he was as much as ever distempered with the same fatal affection for play, which engaged him in one adventure, which well deserves to be related.  ’As he returned to his lodgings from a gaming table, he was attacked in the dark by three ruffians, who were employed to assassinate him.  The earl defended himself with so much resolution, that he dispatched one of the aggressors, while a gentleman accidentally passing that way interposed, and disarmed another; the third secured himself by flight.  This generous assistant was a disbanded officer of a good family and fair reputation; who by what we call partiality of fortune, to avoid censuring the iniquities of the times, wanted even a plain suit of clothes to make a decent appearance at the castle; but his lordship on this occasion presenting him to the duke of Ormond, with great importunity prevailed with his grace that he might resign his post of captain of the guards to his friend, which for about three years the gentleman enjoyed, and upon his death, the duke returned the commission to his generous benefactor.’[1]

His lordship having finished his affairs in Ireland, he returned to London, was made master of the horse to the dutchess of York, and married the lady Frances, eldest daughter of the earl of Burlington, and widow of colonel Courtnay.

About this time, in imitation of those learned and polite assemblies, with which he had been acquainted abroad; particularly one at Caen, (in which his tutor Bochartus died suddenly while he was delivering an oration) he began to form a society for refining and fixing the standard of our language.  In this design, his great friend Mr. Dryden was a particular assistant; a design, says Fenton, of which it is much more easy to conceive an agreeable idea, than any rational