it were easy
to draw the parallel between them. Tiberius's banishment, and his
coming afterward to reign, makes the comparison in that respect come
pretty near. His hating of business, and his love of pleasures; his
raising of favorites, and trusting them entirely; and his pulling them
down, and hating them excessively; his art of covering deep designs,
particularly of revenge, with an appearance of softness, brings them
so near a likeness, that I did not wonder much to observe the
resemblance of their faces and persons. At Rome, I saw one of the last
statues made for Tiberius, after he had lost his teeth. But, bating
the alteration which that made, it was so like King Charles, that
Prince Borghese and Signior Dominico, to whom it belonged, did agree
with me in thinking that it looked like a statute made for him.

Few things ever went near his heart. The Duke of Gloucester's death
seemed to touch him much. But those who knew him best, thought it was
because he had lost him by whom only he could have balanced the
surviving brother, whom he hated, and yet embroiled all his affairs to
preserve the succession to him....

No part of his character looked wickeder, as well as meaner, than that
he, all the while that he was professing to be of the Church of
England, expressing both zeal and affection to it, was yet secretly
reconciled to the Church of Rome; thus mocking God, and deceiving the
world with so gross a prevarication. And his not having the honesty or
courage to own it at the last; his not shewing any sign of the least
remorse for his ill-led life, or any tenderness either for his
subjects in general, or for the queen and his servants; and his
recommending only his mistresses and their children to his brother's
care, would have been a strange conclusion to any other's life, but
was well enough suited to all the other parts of his.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 105: From the "History of Our Own Times."]

[Footnote 106: The profligate earl, of whom the best-known anecdote is
that he once pinned to the door of the King's chamber the following
quatrain:

"Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on:
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one."

It is recorded of the King that, when he saw these lines he remarked
that they were quite true, inasmuch as his words were his own and his
acts were those of his ministers.]

DANIEL DEFOE

Born in 1661, die