acted. He was pleased by the performance, and
touched by the fate of the writer, whom he probably remembered as one of
the gayest and handsomest of his brother's courtiers. The King
determined to pay Wycherley's debts, and to settle on the unfortunate
poet a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This munificence on the
part of a prince who was little in the habit of rewarding literary
merit, and whose whole soul was devoted to the interests of his church,
raises in us a surmise which Mr. Leigh Hunt will, we fear, pronounce
very uncharitable. We cannot help suspecting that it was at this time
that Wycherley returned to the communion of the Church of Rome. That he
did return to the communion of the Church of Rome is certain. The date
of his reconversion, as far as we know, has never been mentioned by any
biographer. We believe that, if we place it at this time, we do no
injustice to the character either of Wycherley or James.

Not long after, old Mr. Wycherley died; and his son, now past the middle
of life, came to the family estate. Still, however, he was not at his
ease. His embarrassments were great; his property was strictly tied up;
and he was on very bad terms with the heir-at-law. He appears to have
led, during a long course of years, that most wretched life, the life of
a vicious old boy about town. Expensive tastes with little money, and
licentious appetites with declining vigor, were the just penance for his
early irregularities. A severe illness had produced a singular effect on
his intellect. His memory played him pranks stranger than almost any
that are to be found in the history of that strange faculty. It seemed
to be at once preternaturally strong and preternaturally weak. If a
book was read to him before he went to bed, he would wake the next
morning with his mind full of the thoughts and expressions which he had
heard overnight; and he would write them down, without in the least
suspecting that they were not his own. In his verses the same ideas, and
even the same words, came over and over again several times in a short
composition. His fine person bore the marks of age, sickness, and
sorrow; and he mourned for his departed beauty with an effeminate
regret. He could not look without a sigh at the portrait which Lely had
painted of him when he was only twenty-eight, and often murmured,
_Quantum mutatus ab illo_. He was still nervously anxious about his
literary reputation, and not content with the fame wh