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CHARACTER OF CHARLES II.
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in the Mews accounts.[1] Many an abuse has been perpetuated on no better grounds.
Such was Charles II.;
Great Pan who wont to chase the fair
And loved the spreading oak;[2]
and such are the materials from which David Hume and Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Fox and Mr. Macaulay, have drawn in part their characters of the King. But there are other materials for a true understanding of the man,
A merry monarch, scandalous and poor,
and these are his sayings, which Walpole loved to repeat, and of which I have made a collection in the following chapter.
