ster, and yet no statesman;
if often the creature of popular admiration, he was at length hated by
the people; if long envied by his equals, and betrayed by his own
creatures,[229] "delighting too much in the press and affluence of
dependents and suitors, who are always the burrs, and sometimes the
briars of favourites," as Wotton well describes them; if one of his
great crimes in the eyes of the people was, that "his enterprises
succeeded not according to their impossible expectation;" and that it
was a still greater, that Buckingham had been the permanent favourite
of two monarchs, who had spoilt their child of fortune; then may the
future inquirer find something of his character which remains to be
opened; to instruct alike the sovereigns and the people, and "be worthy
to be registered among the great examples of time and fortune."

Contrast the fate of BUCKINGHAM with that of his great rival, RICHELIEU.
The one winning popularity and losing it; once in the Commons saluted as
"their redeemer," till, at length, they resolved that "Buckingham was
the cause of all the evils and dangers to the king and kingdom."
Magnificent, open, and merciful; so forbearing, even in his acts of
gentle oppression, that they were easily evaded; and riots and libels
were infecting the country, till, in the popular clamour, Buckingham was
made a political monster, and the dagger was planted in the heart of the
incautious minister. The other statesman, unrelenting in his power, and
grinding in his oppression, unblest with one brother-feeling, had his
dungeons filled and his scaffolds raised, and died in safety and
glory--a cautious tyrant!

There exists a manuscript memoir of Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was one
of those ingenious men whom Buckingham delighted to assemble about him:
for this was one of his characteristics, that although the duke himself
was not learned, yet he never wanted for knowledge; too early in life a
practical man, he had not the leisure to become a contemplative one; he
supplied this deficiency by perpetually "sifting and questioning well"
the most eminent for their experience and knowledge; and Lord Bacon, and
the Lord Keeper Williams, as well as such as Gerbier, were admitted into
this sort of intimacy. We have a curious letter by Lord Bacon, of advice
to our minister, written at his own request: and I have seen a large
correspondence with that subtle politician, the Lord Keeper Williams,
who afterwards attempted to