[Footnote 34: Robert Constable, third Viscount of Dunbar. He is elsewhere mentioned with the epithet of "brawny Dunbar." He married, 1st, Mary, daughter of Lord Bellasis; 2dly, the countess-dowager of Westmoreland.] [Footnote 35: The unfortunate duke; the qualities of whose mind did not correspond to his exterior accomplishments. Rochester says of him,-- But, now we talk of Maestricht, where is he Famed for that brutal piece of bravery? He, with his thick impenetrable scull, The solid hardened armour of a fool, Well might himself to all war's ills expose, Who, come what will, yet had no brains to lose. ] [Footnote 36: Sir Carr Scroop, a poet and courtier. See Note on the "Epistle to Julian."] [Footnote 37: 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.] [Footnote 38: _Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham's Works_, Vol. II. p. 61. 4to, 1723.] [Footnote 39: Sir John Earnely was bred to the law; but became distinguished as a second-rate statesman. He was chancellor of the exchequer in 1686; and was made one of the commissioners of the treasury, in the room of the Earl of Rochester.]