There was a German officer of Webb’s, with whom we used to joke, and of whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed in the army, that he was eldest son of the hereditary Grand Bootjack of the Empire, and the heir to that honor of which his ancestors had been very proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, as they drew the boot from the other.  I have heard that the old Lord Castlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle, though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he served (and who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court than of his ancestral honors, and valued his dignity (as Lord of the Butteries and Groom of the King’s Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it.  He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration:  stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman.  This resolute old loyalist, who was with the King whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad with his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester fight.  On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after the Restoration, never was away from the Court of the monarch (for whose return we offer thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of the French king.

What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile?  Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune?  Mr. Addison has painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato.  But suppose fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost.  The Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door—­on which the exile’s unpaid drink is scored up—­upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing.  Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him.  Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories:  and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.