Diogenes
Teufelsdroeckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their
wit; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition
of their hearts; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed for them in the
engrossing question of the fit of their breeches. D'Artois is of their
kin, French d'Artois who helped to ruin the Old Order and failed to
re-create it as Charles the Tenth, d'Artois whom Mercier describes as
being poured into his faultlessly fitting breeches by the careful and
united efforts of no less than four valets de chambre. But the English
dandies were better than the Frenchman, for they did harm only to
themselves, while he helped to ruin his cause, his party, and his king.

As we turn the pages, we come to one name which immediately if
whimsically suggests poetry. The man was, like Touchstone's Audrey, not
poetical and yet a great poet has been pleased to address him, very much
as Pindar might have addressed the Ancestral Hero of some mighty tyrant.

Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe--no,
Yours was the wrong way!--always understand,
Supposing that permissibly you planned
How statesmanship--your trade--in outward show
Might figure as inspired by simple zeal
For serving country, king, and commonweal,
(Though service tire to death the body, teaze
The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge)
And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees
In all respects--right reason being judge--
With inward care that while the statesman spends
Body and soul thus freely for the sake
Of public good, his private welfare take
No harm by such devotedness.

Thus Robert Browning in Robert Browning's penultimate book, that
"Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day" which fell
somewhat coldly upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it
seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served only as the
discordant prelude to the swan song of "Asolando," the last and almost
the greatest of his glories. Perhaps only Browning would ever have
thought of undertaking a poetical parley with Bubb Dodington. Dodington
is now largely, and not undeservedly forgotten. His dinners and his
dresses, his poems and his pamphlets, his plays and his passions--the
wind has carried them all away. If Pope had not nicknamed him Bubo, if
Foote had not caricatured him in "The Patron," if Churchill had not
lampooned him in "The Rosciad," he wo