rantic with rage, and
poured out the bitterest invectives against the countess. The result was
that, one night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments at St.
James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through his chair,
and one of them pierced his arm. This, and other occurrences, at last
aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, who had hitherto never doubted
his wife: he challenged the Duke of Buckingham; and his infamous wife,
it is said, held her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord
Shrewsbury was killed,[6] and the scandalous intimacy went on as before.
No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, appeared
shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their remarks, or joined in
their indignation: all moral sense was suspended, or wholly stifled; and
Villiers gloried in his depravity, more witty, more amusing, more
fashionable than ever; and yet he seems, by the best-known and most
extolled of his poems, to have had some conception of what a real and
worthy attachment might be.

The following verses are to his 'Mistress':--

'What a dull fool was I
To think so gross a lie,
As that I ever was in love before!
I have, perhaps, known one or two,
With whom I was content to be
At that which they call keeping company.
But after all that they could do,
I still could be with more.
Their absence never made me shed a tear;
And I can truly swear,
That, till my eyes first gazed on you,
I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore.

'A world of things must curiously be sought:
A world of things must be together brought
To make up charms which have the power to make,
Through a discerning eye, true love;
That is a master-piece above
What only looks and shape can do;
There must be wit and judgment too,
Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw,
From the whole world, respect and awe.

'She that would raise a noble love must find
Ways to beget a passion for her mind;
She must be that which she to be would seem,
For all true love is grounded on esteem:
Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart
Than all the crooked subtleties of art.
She must be--what said I?--she must be _you_:
None but yourself that miracle can