to the restoration, there are no accounts of our author; but as soon
as his Majesty returned, he entered upon the office of surveyor of his
Majesty's buildings, in the room of Inigo Jones, deceased; and at the
coronation of King Charles II. was created a knight of the Bath. Upon
some discontent arising from his second marriage he lost his senses,
but soon recovering from that disorder, he continued in great esteem at
court for his poetical writings. In the dedication of his poems to King
Charles II. he tells us that he had been discouraged by King Charles I.
from writing verses.

'One morning (says he) when I was waiting upon the King at Causham,
smiling upon me, he said he could tell me some news of myself, which was
that he had seen some verses of mine the evening before (being those to
Sir Robert Fanshaw) and asking me when I made them, I told him two or
three years since; he was pleased to say, that having never seen them
before, he was afraid I had written them since my return into England;
and though he liked them well he would advise me to write no more:
alledging, that when men are young, and having little else to do, they
might vent the over-flowings of their fancy that way, but when they were
thought fit for more serious employments, if they still persisted in
that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better;
whereupon I stood corrected as long as I had the honour to wait upon
him.' This is a strong instance of his duty to the King; but no great
compliment to his Majesty's taste: nor was the public much obliged to
the Monarch for this admonition to our author.

But King Charles II being of an humour more sprightly than his father,
was a professed encourager of poetry, and in his time a race of wits
sprung up, unequalled by those of any other reign.