"I passed a delightful winter, carrying messages, going to plays, dining, drinking, dressing, and hearing the King and his courtiers talk. By degrees I was encouraged to talk myself. I got a reputation for being both a hearty and a judicious admirer of wit and poetry, and this procured me the regard of the men I was most anxious to please. Lord Buckhurst liked me because I was discriminating; Sir John Denham, because I listened with respect; Sir Charles Sedley, because none of his similes were lost on me; and Mr. Waller, because I thought him the greatest poet that ever was, I had some misgiving on that point, when I thought of poor Mr. Cowley, who died not long afterwards. Mr. Sprat (lately made Bishop of Rochester, then the Duke of Buckingham's chaplain,) took me to see that great and good man in his retreat in the country, where he talked so delightfully of rural pleasures, that I began to sigh after my old fields, till I heard him say he had realized nothing but agues, and that the Arcadians in his vicinity were anything but what they should be. He thought, however, he should find them a little higher up the river." _Lely's Portrait of Cromwell_ is thus introduced in the second volume: "Oliver now stood erect, with his back to a fire-place, and resembled the picture which had been lately painted of him by Lely. The artist flattered him perhaps in the general air, as far as it implied ordinary good breeding, and an habitual urbanity of carriage; and yet the momentary look may not have been flattered even in that respect; for as the greater includes the less, so the princely serenity which Cromwell could assume as well as any man, or rather which was natural to him in his princely moments, involved of necessity whatever is of the like quality in the self-possession of an ordinary gentleman. You have heard what Cromwell said, when Lely was about to paint this picture? He desired him to omit nothing that could complete the likeness, however it might tell against smoothness and good looks. Not a wart, or a wrinkle was to be left out. Lely accordingly produced a stronger and bluffer face than is usual with him; though it is to be doubted, whether the sense of beauty to which he afterwards made such a sacrifice of his pencil, would have permitted him to go to the extent of Cromwell's direction, granting even that the instinct of a courtier had not prevented it. Nor are we to suppose, that Cromwell himself, however great a man, was displeased to think that his warts and wrinkles had been found less inimical to pleasingness of aspect, than might have been looked for. Be this as it may, I was afterwards when I came to see the picture, highly struck with the resemblance it bore to him at the period of this interview. If there was any defect on the wrong side it was, that the eyes were not fine enough; not sufficiently deep and full of meaning. And yet they are not vulgar eyes, in Lely's picture. The