absence of any standard of sexual morality. Charles, indeed,
set the fashion, Pepys reporting of Mrs. Stewart that the
king 'gets into corners, and will be with her half an hour
together, kissing her to the observation of all the world'.
Courtiers took the hint in a manner familiar to the most
superficial student of memoirs of the period, so that 'the
names of Buckingham and Rochester, of Etherege, Killi-
grew, and Sedley', as Bishop Wilberforce once wrote, 'still
maintain a bad pre-eminence in the annals of English vice'.
Yet the interesting thing is that these men were not only
wild gallants, but have a certain place in English literature.
Buckingham wrote, or at least assisted in writing, The
Rehearsal, and adapted Fletcher The Chances; Rochester,
a strong and subtle mind, made poems that certainly out-
shine those of 'The mob of gentlemen who wrote with
ease'; Killigrew was the author of several comedies, while
Sedley adapted Terence, wrote an original play, and some
charming poems, one of which begins with the immortal
couplet:

Love still has something of the sea
From whence his mother rose.

These reviled rakes, then, were men of taste and of cul-
tivated refinement. Buckhurst, afterward Lord Dorset,
was a great patron of poets, and wrote the famous ballad
'To all you ladies now at land'. And in those days it did
not seem absurd that Buckingham and Rochester should
each, on dying, gain the solemn praises of Bishop Burnet.

It is idle to insist upon the licence of the times. If we
read Hamilton Memoirs of Grammont, an 'exquisite picture
of manners', as Gibbon called it, we can get a clear notion
of the general attitude. Court ladies went about masked;
duchesses disguised themselves as flower sellers to visit
their lovers in the early morning. Miss Jennings (sister of

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