Corrupt our virgins, still our youth ensnares; So sunk her character, so lost her fame, Scarce visited before your highness came: Yet for the bed-chamber ’tis her you choose, When zeal and fame and virtue you refuse. Ah! worthy choice! not one of all your train Whom censure blasts not, and dishonours stain! Let the nice hind now suckle dirty pigs, And the proud pea-hen hatch the cuckoo’s eggs! Let Iris leave her paint and own her age, And grave Suffolka wed a giddy page! A greater miracle is daily view’d, A virtuous Princess with a Court so lewd. “I know thee, Court! with all thy treach’rous wiles, Thy false caresses and undoing smiles! Ah! Princess, learn’d in all the courtly arts, To cheat our hopes, and yet to gain our hearts! “Large lovely bribes are the great statesman’s aim; And the neglected patriot follows fame. The Prince is ogled; some the king pursue; But your Roxana only follows you. Despis’d Roxana, cease, and try to find Some other, since the Princess proves unkind: Perhaps it is not hard to find at Court, If not a greater, a more firm support.”’ There was every kind of rumour as to Lady Mary’s own conduct, and we have no means of saying whether any of these rumours were true. There is no evidence against her which is worthy of the name. So far as can be proved, she was simply a gay, witty, bold-spoken, handsome woman, who made many enemies by unscrupulous speech, and many friends by unscrupulous flirtation. We may believe, but we cannot prove, that she found her husband tedious, and was dissatisfied that his slow, methodical, _borné_ mind made so little progress in the political world, and understood so little of what really passed there. Unquestionably she must have much preferred talking to Lord Hervey to talking with Mr. Montagu. But we must not credit the idle scandals of a hundred years since, because they may have been true, or because they appear not inconsistent with the characters of those to whom they relate. There were legends against every attractive and fashionable woman in that age, and most of the legends were doubtless exaggerations and inventions. We cannot know the truth of such matters now, and it would hardly be worth searching into if we could; but the important fact is certain, Lady Mary lived in a world in which the worst rumours were greedily told, and often believed, about her and others; and the moral refinement of a woman must always be impaired by such a contact.