Note 37 — AN ESSAY UPON SATIRE.

The royal mistresses were, the Duchesses of Cleveland and of Portsmouth. Neither was supposed over-scrupulous in fidelity to their royal lover. The Duchess of Cleveland, in particular, lavished her favours even upon Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer; at least, so Count Hamilton assures us, in the "Memoirs of Grammont." The Duchess of Portsmouth was a pensioner of the French court; by whom she was thrown into the arms of Charles, with the express purpose of securing his attachment to the cause of France. Charles knew, as well as any of his subjects, the infidelity of one mistress, and the treachery of the other; and Sheffield has elsewhere vindicated the epithet of "sauntering," which is here bestowed on that indolent monarch. "I am of opinion," says the duke, "that, in his latter times, there was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among his mistresses; who, after all, only served to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called sauntering, and talking without constraint, was the true sultana-queen he delighted in."[38] While Sheffield thus solemnly confirms, in prose, the character given of Charles in the "Essay upon Satire," he ascertains his claim to the property of the poem. And I must add, I should be sorry to think Dryden was accessary to lampooning persons, to whom he had offered the incense of his verse. See the "Epistle to Lady Castlemain," afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, and "The Fair Stranger," addressed to Louise Querouailles, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth.