“As beams of warm imagination play,
The memory’s faint traces melt away. 
See Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 201.-E.

(109) Pope alludes to this personal defect in his lines “On a certain Lady at court:” 

“I know a thing that’s most uncommon;
(Envy be silent, and attend!)
I know a reasonable woman,
handsome and witty, yet a friend. 
Not warp’d by passion, awed by rumour;
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly—­
An equal mixture of good humour
And sensible, soft melancholy. 
‘Has she no faults then,’ (Envy says,) ‘Sir?’
’Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the world conspires to praise her—­
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.’"-E.

(110) The same thing has happened to me by books.  A passage lately read has recalled some other formerly perused; and both together have opened to me, or cleared up some third fact, which neither separately would have expounded.

(111) Lady Suffolk died in July, 1767.-E.

(112) Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness.  Cheselden, the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned convict then in Newgate, who was deaf.  If the man could be pardoned, he would try it; and, if he succeeded, would practise the same cure on her ladyship.  She obtained the man’s pardon, who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended discovery to save his relation-and no more was heard of the experiment.  The man saved his ear too-but Cheselden was disgraced at court.

(113) Lady Suffolk formally retired from court in 1734, and in the following year married the Honourable George Berkeley, youngest son of the second Earl of Berkeley.  He was Master of St. Catherine’s, in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments as member for Dover.  He died in 1746.-E.

(114) While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus.  Mrs. Selwyn, bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the service.  He said archly, “And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam!” Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped.  The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed.  He replied, “he would not whistle the word of God through the keyhole.”

(115) Mrs. Clayton, wife of Robert Clayton, Esq. of the Treasury, bedchamber-woman to the Queen.  This lady, who had the art to procure her husband to be created Lord Sundon, possessed over her royal mistress an influence of which even Sir Robert Walpole was jealous.-E.