of the same personage, and was not less acute than Sir Charles’s Odes on the same here.  The Duchess dying not long after Sir Robert’s entrance into the House of Lords, Lord Oxford, one of her executors, told him there, that the Duchess had struck Lord Bath out of her will, and made him, Sir Robert, one of her trustees in his room.  “Then,” said Sir Robert, laughing, @ I see, my lord, that I have got Lord Bath’s place before he has got mine.”  Sir Robert had artfully prevented the last.  Before he quitted the King, he persuaded his Majesty to insist, as a preliminary to the change, that Mr. Pulteney should go into the House of Peers, his great credit lying in the other house; and I remember my father’s action when he returned from court and told me what he had done-,, I have turned the key of the closet on him,"-making that motion with his hand.  Pulteney had jumped at the proffered earldom, but saw his error when too late; and was so enraged at his own oversight, that, when he went to take the oaths in the House of Lords, he dashed his patent on the floor, and vowed he would never take it up-but he had kissed the King’s hand for it, and it was too late to recede.

But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank.  She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough:  she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey.  It was for the procession at her son’s burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke.  “It carried my Lord Marlborough,” replied the other, and shall never be used for any body else.”  “I have consulted the undertaker,” replied the Buckingham, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds.”

One of the last acts of Buckingham’s life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey.  That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge or exalt himself.  Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing:  at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the House of Stuart.  It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather:  she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.

It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them.  Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other.  The Buckingham believed him:  the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left the copy behind him!(128)