Page:Diary of the times of Charles II Vol. I.djvu/53

Rh by Waller under the name of Saccharissa. He was early employed in diplomatic missions, where he acquired the political knowledge, insinuating address, and polished manners which are learnt in that school; together with the subtlety, dissimulation, flexibility of principle, indifference on questions of constitutional policy, and impatience of the restraints of popular government, which have been sometimes contracted by English Ambassadors, in the course of a long intercourse with the Ministers of absolute Princes. A faint and superficial preference of the general principles of civil liberty was blended in a manner not altogether unusual with his diplomatic vices.

"He seems to have gained the support of the Duchess of Portsmouth to the administration formed by the advice of Sir William Temple, and to have then gained the confidence of that incomparable person, who possessed all the honest acts of a negotiator. He gave an early earnest of the inconstancy of an over-refined character, by fluctuating between the exclusion of the Duke of York and the limitations of the royal prerogative. He was removed from the administration for his vote on the Bill of Exclusion. The love of office soon prevailed over his feeble spirit of independence, and Rh