MINISTER--DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, LORD ADMIRAL, LORD GENERAL, &c. &c.
&c.

"Had the Duke of Buckingham been blessed with a faithful friend,
qualified with wisdom and integrity, the duke would have committed as
few faults, and done as transcendent worthy actions as any man in that
age in Europe." Such was the opinion of Lord Clarendon in the prime of
life, when, yet untouched by party feeling, he had no cause to plead,
and no quarrel with truth.[226]

The portrait of Buckingham by Hume seems to me a character dove-tailed
into a system, adjusted to his plan of lightening the errors of Charles
the First by participating them among others. This character conceals
the more favourable parts of no ordinary man: the spirit which was
fitted to lead others by its own invincibility, and some qualities he
possessed of a better nature. All the fascination of his character is
lost in the general shade cast over it by the niggardly commendation,
that he possessed "_some_ accomplishments of a courtier." Some, indeed!
and the most pleasing; but not all truly, for dissimulation and
hypocrisy were arts unpractised by this courtier. "His sweet and
attractive manner, so favoured by the graces," has been described by Sir
Henry Wotton, who knew him well; while Clarendon, another living
witness, tells us that "he was the most rarely accomplished the court
had ever beheld; while some that found inconvenience in his nearness,
intending by some affront to discountenance him, perceived he had masked
under this gentleness a terrible courage, as could safely protect all
his sweetnesses."

The very errors and infirmities of Buckingham seem to have started from
qualities of a generous nature; too devoted a friend, and too
undisguised an enemy, carrying his loves and his hatreds on his open
forehead;[227] too careless of calumny,[228] too fearless of danger; he
was, in a word, a man of sensation, acting from impulse; scorning,
indeed, prudential views, but capable at all times of embracing grand
and original ones; compared by the jealousy of faction to the Spenser of
Edward the Second, and even the Sejanus of Tiberius, he was no enemy to
the people; often serious in the best designs, but volatile in the
midst; his great error sprung from a sanguine spirit. "He was ever,"
says Wotton, "greedy of honour and hot upon the public ends, and too
confident in the prosperity of beginnings." If Buckingham was a hero,
and yet neither general nor admiral; a mini