Note 328 — AUGUST.
Reading edition
"Thus Kitty, beautiful and young, And wild as colt untamed."
Prior's Female Phaeton.
Catherine Hyde, daughter of Henry Earl of Clarendon, and wife of Charles Duke of Queensberry. She was the friend of Gay, and her beauty, wit, and oddities have been celebrated in prose and rhyme by the wits and poets of two generations. Fifty-six years after Prior had sung her "mad Grace's" praises, Walpole added those two lines to the Female Phaeton—
"To many a Kitty Love his car, will for a day engage, But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, obtained it for an age."
She died at a great age in 1777. For her letter to George II. when forbid the Court, see Agar Ellis, Historical Inquiries, Lond. 1827, p. 40.