The success of the 'Queens of Society' will have pioneered the way for
the 'Wits and Beaux:' with whom, during the holiday time of their lives,
these fair ladies were so greatly associated. The 'Queens,' whether all
wits or not, must have been the cause of wit in others; their influence
over dandyism is notorious: their power to make or mar a man of fashion,
almost historical. So far, a chronicle of the sayings and doings of the
'Wits' is worthy to serve as a _pendant_ to that of the 'Queens:' happy
would it be for society if the annals of the former could more closely
resemble the biography of the latter. But it may not be so: men are
subject to temptations, to failures, to delinquencies, to calamities, of
which women can scarcely dream, and which they can only lament and pity.
Our 'Wits,' too--to separate them from the 'Beaux'--were men who often
took an active part in the stirring events of their day: they assumed to
be statesmen, though, too frequently, they were only politicians. They
were brave and loyal: indeed, in the time of the Stuarts, all the Wits
were Cavaliers, as well as the Beaux. One hears of no repartee among
Cromwell's followers; no dash, no merriment, in Fairfax's staff;
eloquence, indeed, but no wit in the Parliamentarians; and, in truth, in
the second Charles's time, the king might have headed the lists of the
Wits himself--such a capital man as his Majesty is known to have been
for a wet evening or a dull Sunday; such a famous teller of a
story--such a perfect diner-out: no wonder that in his reign we had
George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham of that family, 'mankind's
epitome,' who had every pretension to every accomplishment combined in
himself. No wonder we could attract De Grammont and Saint Evremond to
our court; and own, somewhat to our discredit be it allowed, Rochester
and Beau Fielding. Every reign has had its wits, but those in Charles's
time were so numerous as to distinguish the era by an especial
brilliancy. Nor let it be supposed that these annals do not contain a
moral application. They show how little the sparkling attributes herein
pourtrayed conferred happiness; how far more the rare, though certainly
real touches of genuine feeling and strong affection, which appear here
and there even in the lives of the most thoughtless 'Wits and Beaux,'
elevate the character in youth, or console the spirit in age. They prove
how wise has been that change in society which now repudiates the 'Wit'
as a distinct class; and requires general intelligences as a
compensation for lost repartees, or long obsolete practical jokes.
'Men are not all evil:' so in the life of George Villiers, we find him
kind-hearted, and free from hypocrisy. His old servants--and the fact
speaks in extenuation of one of our wildest Wits and Beaux--loved him
faithfully. De Grammont, we all own, has little to redeem him except his
good-nature: Rochester's latest days were almost hallowed by his
penitence. Chesterfield is saved by his kindness to the Irish, and his
affection for his son. Horace Walpole had human affections, though a
most inhuman pen: and Wharton was famous for his good-humour.
The periods most abounding in the Wit and the Beau have, of course, been
those most exempt from wars, and rumours of wars. The Restoration; the
early period of the Augustan age; the commencement of the Hanoverian
dynasty,--have all been enlivened by Wits and Beaux, who came to light
like mushrooms after a storm of rain, as soon as the political horizon
was clear. We have Congreve, who affected to be the Beau as well as the
Wit; Lord Hervey, more of the courtier than the Beau--a Wit by
inheritance--a peer, assisted into a pre-eminent position by royal
preference, and consequent _prestige_; and all these men were the
offspring of the particular state of the times in which they figured: at
earlier periods, they would have been deemed effeminate; in later ones,
absurd.
Then the scene shifts: intellect had marched forward gigantically: the
world is grown exacting, disputatious, critical, and such men as Horace
Walpole and Brinsley Sheridan appear; the characteristics of wit which
adorned that age being well diluted by the feebler talents of Selwyn and
Hook.
Of these, and others, '_table traits_,' and other traits, are here
given: brief chronicles of _their_ life's stage, over which a curtain
has so long been dropped, are supplied carefully from well established
sources: it is with characters, not with literary history, that we deal;
and do our best to make the portraitures life-like, and to bring forward
old memories, which, without the stamp of antiquity, might be suffered
to pass into obscurity.
Your Wit and your Beau, be he French or English, is no mediæval
personage: the aristocracy of the present day rank among his immediate
descendants: he is a creature of a modern and an artificial age; and
with his career are mingled many features of civilized life, manners,
habits, and traces of family history which are still, it is believed,
interesting to the majority of English readers, as they have long been
to