--Anecdote of Lord Dorset.--Lord Rochester in his
Zenith.--His Courage and Wit.--Rochester's Pranks in the
City.--Credulity, Past and Present.--'Dr. Bendo,' and La Belle
Jennings.--La Triste Heritiere.--Elizabeth, Countess of
Rochester.--Retribution and Reformation.--Conversion.--Beaux
without Wit.--Little Jermyn.--An Incomparable Beauty.--Anthony
Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer.--The Three Courts.--'La
Belle Hamilton.'--Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her.--The
Household Deity of Whitehall.--Who shall have the Caleche?--A
Chaplain in Livery.--De Grammont's Last Hours.--What might he
not have been?
It has been observed by a French critic, that the Memoires de Grammont
afford the truest specimens of French character in our language. To this
it may be added, that the subject of that animated narrative was most
completely French in principle, in intelligence, in wit that hesitated
at nothing, in spirits that were never daunted, and in that incessant
activity which is characteristic of his countrymen. Grammont, it was
said, 'slept neither night nor day;' his life was one scene of incessant
excitement.
His father, supposed to have been the natural son of Henry the Great, of
France, did not suppress that fact, but desired to publish it: for the
morals of his time were so depraved, that it was thought to be more
honourable to be the illegitimate son of a king than the lawful child of
lowlier parents.
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