ays. Of the first, Charles Lamb says: "There is no
casket rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep
safe such a jewel"; but Pepys, who lived at the same time as the noble
authoress, described it as "the ridiculous History of the Duke, which
shows her to be a mad, conceited, rediculous woman, and he an asse to
suffer her to write what she does to and of him". Her own memoir is
charmingly and unaffectedly egotistical. She tells us: "I fear my
ambition inclines to vainglory, for I am very ambitious, yet 'tis
neither for beauty, wit, title, wealth, or power, but as they are Steps
to raise me to Fancies Tower, which is to live by remembrance in all
ages.... My Disposition is more inclined to Melancholy than Merry, but
not crabbed or peevish Melancholy, but soft, melting, and contemplating
Melancholy, and I am apt rather to weep than to laugh." Always fearing
that she might be mistaken by posterity for her husband's first wife,
she gives an elaborate explanation at the end of the book, so that all
in after years might accredit her with intellectual magnificence.

Although she met with much ridicule at the Court of Charles the Second,
being satirized particularly by the libertine poets Etherege and Sedley,
the fulsome praise of men of considerable intellect was lavished upon
her, and even the sedate and usually truthful Evelyn, after a lengthy
enumeration of the great women of history, flattered her with the
assurance that all of those summed up together only divided between them
what she retained in one! A curious story is told of her appearance with
a train-bearer in the chamber of Catherine of Portugal. As this was a
breach of Court etiquette, she was forbidden to repeat it, and resented
the reproof by wearing at her next appearance a train of satin and
silver thirty yards long, with the end supported by four waiting-ladies
in the ante-room.

She wrote several plays, concerning one of which, _The Humorous Lovers_,
Pepys tells us that although he would rather not have seen it, since it
was so sickeningly silly, yet he was glad, because he could understand
her better afterwards. At the end of the first performance, as a queen
of breeding, she stood up in her box and made her respects to the
actors.

In those days of better fortunes the quaintly assorted couple spent much
time in the country houses of Welbeck and Bolsover. The duke's income
was very large, being equal to at least L200,000 of our money,