n
the risk, nor give himself the trouble, which so great a design
required. He had an appearance of gentleness in his outward
deportment; but he seemed to have no bowels nor tenderness in his
nature, and in the end of his life he became cruel. He was apt to
forgive all crimes, even blood itself, yet he never forgave anything
that was done against himself, after his first and general act of
indemnity, which was to be reckoned as done rather upon maxims of
state than inclinations of mercy. He delivered himself up to a most
enormous course of vice, without any sort of restraint, even from the
consideration of the nearest relations. The most studied extravagances
that way seemed, to the very last, to be much delighted in and pursued
by him. He had the art of making all people grow fond of him at first,
by a softness in his whole way of conversation, as he was certainly
the best-bred man of the age. But when it appeared how little could be
built on his promise, they were cured of the fondness that he was apt
to raise in them. When he saw young men of quality, who had something
more than ordinary in them, he drew them about him, and set himself to
corrupt them both in religion and morality; in which he proved so
unhappily successful, that he left England much changed at his death
from what he had found it at his restoration.

He loved to talk over all the stories of his life to every new man
that came about him. His stay in Scotland, and the share he had in the
war of Paris, in carrying messages from one side to the other, were
his common topics. He went over these in a very graceful manner, but
so often and so copiously, that all those who had been long accustomed
to them grew weary of them; and when he entered on those stories, they
usually withdrew: so that he often began them in a full audience, and
before he had done, there were not above four or five persons left
about him: which drew a severe jest from Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester.[106] He said he wondered to see a man have so good a
memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least
circumstance; and yet not remember that he had told it to the same
persons the very day before. This made him fond of strangers, for they
harkened to all his oft-repeated stories, and went away as in a
rapture at such an uncommon condescension of a king.

His person and temper, his vices as well as his fortunes, resemble the
character that we have given us of Tiberius so much, that