ostensive indelicacy; he complains that he has no companion in that part
of the world, no Sir Charles Sedleys, nor Buckinghams, and what is still
worse, even deprived of the happiness of a mistress, for, the women
there, he says, are so coy, and so narrowly watched by their relations,
that there is no possibility of accomplishing an intrigue. He mentions,
however, one Monsieur Hoffman, who married a French lady, with whom he
was very great, and after the calamitous accident of Mr. Hoffman's being
drowned, he pleasantly describes the grief of the widow, and the methods
he took of removing her sorrow, by an attempt in which he succeeded.
These two letters discover the true character of Etherege, as well as
of the noble person to whom they were sent, and mark them as great
libertines, in speculation as in practice.

As for the other compositions of our author, they consist chiefly of
little airy sonnets, smart lampoons, and smooth panegyrics. All that we
have met with more than is here mentioned, of his writing in prose, is
a short piece, entitled An Account of the Rejoicing at the Diet of
Ratisbon, performed by Sir George Etherege, Knight, residing there from
his Majesty of Great Britain, upon Occasion of the Birth of the Prince
of Wales; in a Letter from himself, printed in the Savoy 1688. When our
author died, the writers of his life have been very deficient; Gildon
says, that after the Revolution, he followed his master into France, and
died there, or very soon after his arrival in England from thence. But
there was a report (say the authors of the Biograph. Brit. which they
received from an ingenious gentleman) 'that Sir George came to an
untimely death, by an unlucky accident at Ratisbon, for, after having
treated some company with a liberal entertainment at his house there,
when he had taken his glass too freely, and, being through his great
complaisance too forward, in waiting on his guests at their departure,
flushed as he was, he tumbled down stairs, and broke his neck, and so