Says
Wood: "His person was handsome and gigantick, and nothing was wanting to
make him a compleat Cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble
address that had he been dropped out of the clouds into any part of the
world, he would have made himself respected; but the Jesuits who cared not
for him, spoke spitefully, and said it was true, but then he must not stay
there above six weeks. He had a great faculty, which proceeded from
abundance of wit and invention, of proposing and reporting matters to the
Virtuosi."
Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them--though in spite
of the importunities of Marie de Medicis, the long friendship with
Henrietta Maria, his early flirtation with the lovely Spaniard, his earnest
and impolitic championship of the notorious Lady Purbeck--Romish convert
and adventuress--Venetia, it seems, remained his only love. He was never
the mere gallant. He treated women as his intellectual equals, but as
equals who had to be splendidly entertained and amused. His conversation
was "ingeniose and innocent.
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