"Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew In time to make a nation rue; Tho' it contributed its own fall, To wait upon the public downfall.... 'Twas bound to suffer persecution And martyrdom with resolution; T' oppose itself against the hate And vengeance of the incens'd state, In whose defiance it was worn, Still ready to be pull'd and torn, With red-hot irons to be tortur'd, Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd. Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast As long as monarchy should last; But when the state should hap to reel, 'Twas to submit to fatal steel, And fall, as it was consecrate, A sacrifice to fall of state, Whose thread of life the fatal sisters Did twist together with its whiskers, And twine so close, that time should never, In life or death, their fortunes sever; But with his rusty sickle mow Both down together at a blow."[231] The nonsense increases as we go on. Could anyone have taken pleasure in humor such as this? "This sword a dagger had, his page, That was but little for his age; And therefore waited on him so As dwarfs upon knights-errant do.... When it had stabb'd, or broke a head, It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread.... 'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth Set leeks and onions, and so forth."[232] Everything becomes trivial; if any beauty presents itself, it is spoiled by burlesque. To read those long details of the kitchen, those servile and crude jokes, people might fancy themselves in the company of a common buffoon in the market-place; it is the talk of the quacks on the bridges, adapting their imagination and language to the manners of the beer-shop and the hovel. There is filth to be met with there; indeed, the rabble will laugh when the mountebank alludes to the disgusting acts of private life.[233] Such is the grotesque stuff in which the courtiers of the Restoration delighted; their spite and their coarseness took a pleasure in the spectacle of these bawling puppets; even now, after two centuries, we hear the ribald laughter of this audience of lackeys. Section IV.--Morals of the Court Charles II, when at his meals, ostentatiously drew Grammont's attention to the fact that his officers served him on their knees. They were in the right; it was their fit attitude. Lord Chancellor Clarendon, one of the most honored and honest men of the Court, learns suddenly and in full council that his daughter Anne is enceinte by the Duke of York, and that the Duke, the king's brother, has promised her marriage. Listen to the words of this tender father; he has himself taken care to hand them down: "The Chancellor broke out into a very immoderate passion against the wickedness of his daughter, and said with all imaginable earnestness, 'that as soon as he came home, he would turn her (his daughter) out of his house as a strumpet to shift for herself, and would never see her again.'"[234]