Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/118

74 Gentlemen. We have several others who are recorded for celebrated Wits among the Nobility and Gentry of Rome, but I need not detain Your Lordship any longer there.

After the Court of Augustus, we may mention the Court of King Charles the Second, and find my Lord Rochester and Dorset, the Duke of Buckingham that was then, and the Duke of Buckingham that is now, Paramount in Wit, and as Graceful in their Writing as in their Persons: The Wit of some of them indeed was scandalously abused, but otherwise their Satyr was Courtly, and their Poetry upon all other Rh