Volume 1

Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution in 1688 to the death of George the Second / by John Heneage Jesse.

  • John Heneage Jesse
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution in 1688 to the death of George the Second / by John Heneage Jesse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    520/528 (page 494)
    ‘When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit. Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay ;— To-morrow ’s falser than the former day ; Lies more, and when it says we shall be blest With some new joy, cuts off what we possessed. Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure from what still remain ; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the fresh sprightly running could not give: I’m tired with waiting for this chemic gold, Which fools us young, and beggars us when old :’— Verses of Dryden, which I think very pretty, and which most people have felt the truth of. I think one can’t leave the world in a better time than now, when there is no such ‘thing as real friendship, truth, justice, honour, or, indeed, any- thing that is agreeable in life.” The Duchess, “ after sixty years of arrogance,” to use the expression of Horace Walpole, became bed-ridden, a misfortune, however, which appears to have been sustained by her with at least decent resignation. Indeed, the insolence which she had exhibited in the early part of her career appears, in a certain degree, to have been atoned for by the equanimity which she subsequently displayed under the pressure of disease, and with the pros- pect of approaching dissolution. Unfortunately, the Duchess of Marlborough was a disbeliever in, if not a scoffer at, religion. Swift, alluding to her character for wit, ob- serves, that she “affected it by the usual me- thods of arguing against religion, and proving the doctrines of Christianity to be impossible