Memoirs of the Court of England During the Reign of the Stuarts: Including the Protectorate, Volume 3

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Page 65 - Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late ; He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laughed himself from court; then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief: For, spite of him, the weight of business fell On Absalom and wise Achitophel: Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of that was left.
Page 64 - A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long ; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 246 - To pass our tedious hours away, We throw a merry main ; Or else at serious ombre play ; But why should we in vain Each other's ruin thus pursue ! We were undone when we left you.
Page 198 - Following his Majesty this morning through the gallery, I went with the few who attended him, into the Duchess of Portsmouth's dressing-room within her bed-chamber, where she was in her morning loose garment, her maids combing her, newly out of her bed, his Majesty and the gallants standing about her...
Page 126 - And, like the sun, the promised land surveys. Fame runs before him as the morning star, And shouts of joy salute him from afar ; Each house receives him as a guardian god And consecrates the place of his abode.
Page 199 - The deep recesses of the grove he gain'd ; Where, in a plain defended by the wood, Crept through the matted grass a crystal flood, By which an alabaster fountain stood : And on the margin of the fount was laid (Attended by her slaves) a sleeping maid.
Page 369 - Stephen Marshall's, the great Presbyterian's daughters; and that Nelly and Beck Marshall falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell answered her, " I was but one man's mistress, though I was brought up in a brothel to fill strong water to the gentlemen; and you are a mistress to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter.
Page 188 - she was a woman of great beauty, but most enormously vicious and ravenous; foolish, but imperious ; very uneasy to the King, and always carrying on intrigues with other men, while yet she pretended she was jealous of him.
Page 374 - To Westminster; in the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them ; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings' door in Drury-lane in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one : she seemed a mighty pretty creature.
Page 324 - Here lies the learned Savil's heir, So early wise, and lasting fair, That none, except her years they told, Thought her a child, or thought her old.

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