poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a
sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application
than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an
elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every
circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican
philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed
plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and
Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in
the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own
blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark,
Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful
wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a
finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible
statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect
which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who
would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled
in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,

"Amidst the wavering days of sin,
Kept himself icy chaste and pure."

The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
paraphrase of Horace:--

"Climb at Court for me that will,
Tottering Favor's pinnacle;