it all himself and
yet not one word of it his own...."

Of his amours and mistresses the same shrewd observer of human
character, who was also well acquainted with the king, declares "that
his inclinations to love were the effects of health and a good
constitution with as little mixture of the _seraphic_ part as ever man
had.... I am apt to think his stayed as much as any man's ever did in
the _lower_ region." His health was the one subject to which he gave
unremitting attention, and his fine constitution and devotion to all
kinds of sport and physical exercise kept off the effects of
uncontrolled debauchery for thirty years. In later years the society of
his mistresses seems to have been chiefly acceptable as a means to avoid
business and petitioners, and in the case of the duchess of Portsmouth
was the price paid for ease and the continuance of the French pensions.
His ministers he never scrupled to sacrifice to his ease. The love of
ease exercised an entire sovereignty in his thoughts. "The motive of his
giving bounties was rather to make men less uneasy to him than more easy
to themselves." He would rob his own treasury and take bribes to press a
measure through the council. He had a natural affability, but too
general to be much valued, and he was fickle and deceitful. Neither
gratitude nor revenge moved him, and good or ill services left little
impression on his mind. Halifax, however, concludes by desiring to
moderate the roughness of his picture by emphasizing the excellence of
his intellect and memory and his mechanical talent, by deprecating a too
censorious judgment and by dwelling upon the disadvantages of his
bringing up, the difficulties and temptations of his position, and on
the fact that his vices were those common to human frailty. His capacity
for king-craft, knowledge of the world, and easy address enabled him to
surmount difficulties and dangers which would have proved fatal to his
father or to his brother. "It was a common saying that he could send
away a person better pleased at receiving nothing than those in the good
king his father's time that had requests granted them,"[1] and his
good-humoured tact and familiarity compensated for and concealed his
ingratitude and perfidy and preserved his popularity. He had good taste
in art and literature, was fond of chemistry and science, and the Royal
Society was founded in his reign. According to Evelyn he was "debonnaire
and easy of access, naturally k