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The Works of the Right Honourable Sir Chas. Hanbury Williams

... From the Originals in the Possession of His Grandson The Right Hon. The Earl of Essex and Others: With Notes by Horace Walpole ... In Three Volumes, with Portraits

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ON LADY ABERGAVENNY:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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 III. 


122

ON LADY ABERGAVENNY:

BY CHARLES, DUKE OF DORSET.

YOUNG, thoughtless, gay, unfortunately fair,
Her pride to please, and pleasure all her care;
With too much kindness and too little art,
Prone to indulge the dictates of the heart;
Flatter'd by all, solicited, admir'd,
By women envied, and by men desir'd:
At once from full prosperity she's torn,
By friends deserted, of defence forlorn,
Expos'd to talk, to insults, want, and scorn;
By every idle tongue her story told,
The novel of the young, the lecture of the old;
But let the scoffer or the prude relate,
With rigour's utmost force her hapless fate;
Good nature still to soft compassion wrought,
Shall weep her ruin, while it owns her fault.

123

For if her conduct, in some steps betray'd,
To virtue's rule too little reverence paid,
Yet, dying, still she show'd, so dear her fame,
She could survive her guilt, but not her shame:
Her honour dearer than her life she prov'd,
And dearer far than both, the man she lov'd.