A Maecenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well spoken of, and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, as well as a clever statesman.  Halifax got his earldom and the garter from George I., and died, after enjoying them less than a year, in 1715.

Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was associated in the impeachment case in 1701, was a far better man in every respect.  His was probably the purest character among those of all the members of the Kit-kat.  He was the son of a Worcester attorney, and born in 1652.  He was educated at Trinity, Oxford, and rose purely by merit, distinguishing himself at the bar and on the bench, unwearied in his application to business, and an exact and upright judge.  At school he was a terribly good boy, keeping to his book in play-hours.  Throughout life his habits were simple and regular, and his character unblemished.  He slept but little, and in later years had a reader to attend him at waking.  With such habits he can scarcely have been a constant attender at the club; and as he died a bachelor, it would be curious to learn what ladies he selected for his toasts.  In his latter years his mind was weakened, and he died in 1716 of apoplexy.  Walpole calls him ’one of those divine men who, like a chapel in a palace, remained unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly.’

A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in Shire Lane.  In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs of age, for its owner is past sixty; yet he is dressed in superb fashion; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been diligently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that of any young man present.  I do not say it will be repeatable, for the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that of the Kit-kat.  He is Charles Sackville,[14] famous as a companion of the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous—­or, rather, infamous—­for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his verses, for his patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in early life, when Lord Buckhurst.  Rochester called him

    ‘The best good man with the worst-natured muse;’

and Pope says he was

    ’The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
     Of fops in learning and of knaves in state.’

Our sailors still sing the ballad which he is said to have written on the eve of the naval engagement between the Duke of York and Admiral Opdam, which begins—­

    ’To all you ladies now on land
     We men at sea indite.’

With a fine classical taste and a courageous spirit, he had in early days been guilty of as much iniquity as any of Charles’s profligate court.  He was one of a band of young libertines who robbed and murdered a poor tanner on the high-road, and were acquitted, less on account of the poor excuse they dished up for this act than of their rank and fashion.  Such fine gentlemen could not be hanged for the sake