and that she advised him to bring home with him all the female captives he might make in Africa, in order to replace those beauties whom his absence would bring to the grave." Jermyn was highly displeased that she should be capable of raillery in the condition he supposed her reduced to; but he soon perceived she was in earnest. She told him, that she considered this farewell visit as his last, and desired him not to think of making her any more before his departure. Thus far every thing went well on her side. Jermyn was not only confounded at having received his discharge in so cavalier a manner; but this very demonstration of her indifference had revived, and even redoubled, all the love and affection he had formerly felt for her. Thus she had both the pleasure of despising him, and of seeing him more entangled in the chains of love than he had ever been before. This was not sufficient she wished still farther, and very unadvisedly, to strain her resentment. : Ovid's Epistles,172 translated into English verse by the greatest wits at court, having lately been published, she wrote a letter from a shepherdess in despair, addressed to the perfidious Jermyn. She took the epistle of Ariadne to Theseus for her model. The beginning of this letter contained, word for word, the complaints and reproaches of that injured fair to the cruel man by whom she had been abandoned. All this was properly adapted to the present times and circumstances. It was her design to have closed this piece with a description of the toils, perils, and monsters that awaited him in Guinea, for which he quitted a tender mistress, who was plunged into the abyss of misery, and was overwhelmed with grief and despair; but not having had time to finish it, nor to get that which she had written, transcribed, in order to send it to him. under a feigned name, she inconsiderately put this fragment, written in her own hand, into her pocket, and still more gid dily dropped it in the middle of the court. Those who took it up, knowing her writing, made several copies of it, which were circulated all over the town; but her former conduct had so well established the reputation of her virtue, that no person entertained the smallest doubt but the circumstances were exactly as we have related them. Some time after, the Guinea expedition was laid aside for reasons that are universally known, and Miss Jennings's subsequent proceedings fully justified her letter; for, notwithstanding all the efforts and attentions Jermyn practised to regain her affections, she would never more hear of him. But he was not the only man who experienced the whimsical fatality, that seemed to delight in disuniting hearts, in order to engage them soon after to different objects. One would have imagined, that the God of Love, actuated by some new caprice, had placed his empire under the dominion of Hymen, and had, at the same time, blind-folded that god, in order to cross-match most of the lovers whom we have been speaking of. The fair Stewart married the Duke of Richmond; the invincible Jermyn, a silly country girl;173 Lord Rochester a melancholy heiress ; 174 the sprightly Temple, the serious Littleton; Talbot, without knowing why or wherefore, took to wife the languishing Boynton;175 George Hamilton, under more favourable auspices, married the lovely Jennings; and the Chevalier de Grammont, as the reward of a constancy he had never before known, and which he never afterwards practised, found Hymen and Love united in his favour, and was at last blessed with the possession of Miss Hamilton.176 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. NOTE 1, Page 35. Bussi and St. Evremont. Voltaire, in the Age of Lewis XIV., ch. 24, speaking of that monarch, says, "Even at the same time when he began to encourage genius by his liberality, the Count de Bussi was severely punished for the use he made of his he was sent to the Bastile in 1664. THE AMOURS OF THE GAULS was the pretence of his imprisonment; but the true cause was the song in which the king was treated with too much freedom, and which, upon this occasion, was brought to remembrance, to ruin Bussi, the reputed author of it. "Que Deodatus est heureux, De baiser ce bec amoreux, Qui d'une oreille à l'autre va! "See Deodatus with his billing dear, Whose amorous mouth breathes love from ear to ear! "His works were not good enough to compensate for the mischief they did him. He spoke his own language with purity; he had some merit, but more conceit and he made no use of the merit he had, but to make himself enemies." Voltaire adds,-" Bussi was released at the end of eighteen months; but he was in disgrace all the rest of his life, in vain protesting a regard for Lewis XIV." Bussi died 1693. Of St. Evremont, see note, postea. NOTE 2, Page 36. Louis XIII. Son and successor of Henry IV. He began to reign 14th May, 1610, and died 14th May, 1643. |