adventures that became very public.  He was a man of a sweet and caressing temper, had no malice in his heart, but too great a love of pleasure.  He had been sent envoy to Holland in the year 1679, where he entered into such particular confidences with the prince, that he had the highest measure of his trust and favour that any Englishman ever had.”—­History of his Own Times, vol. ii., p. 494.

   In the Essay on Satire, by Dryden and Mulgrave, he is spoken of in
   no very decent terms.

        “And little Sid, for simile renown’d,
        Pleasure has always sought, but never found
        Though all his thoughts on wine and women fall,
        His are so bad, sure he ne’er thinks at all. 
        The flesh he lives upon is rank and strong;
        His meat and mistresses are kept too long. 
        But sure we all mistake this pious man,
        Who mortifies his person all he can
        What we uncharitably take for sin,
        Are only rules of this odd capuchin;
        For never hermit, under grave pretence,
        Has lived more contrary to common sense.”

   These verses, however, have been applied to Sir Charles Sedley,
   whose name was originally spelt Sidley.  Robert Sydney died at
   Pensburst, 1674.]

had not sufficient vivacity to support the impression which his figure made; but little Jermyn was on all sides successful in his intrigues.  The old Earl of St. Albans, his uncle, had for a long time adopted him, though the youngest of all his nephews.  It is well known what a table the good man kept at Paris, while the King his master was starving at Brussels, and the Queen Dowager, his mistress, lived not over well in France.

[To what a miserable state the queen was reduced may be seen in the following extract from De Retz.—­“Four or five days before the king removed from Paris, I went to visit the Queen of England, whom I found in her daughter’s chamber, who hath been since Duchess of Orleans.  At my coming in she said, ’You see I am come to keep Henrietta company.  The poor child could not rise to-day for want of a fire.’  The truth is, that the cardinal for six months together had not ordered her any money towards her pension; that no trades-people would trust her for anything; and that there was not at her lodgings in the Louvre one single billet.  You will do me the justice to suppose that the Princess of England did not keep her bed the next day for want of a faggot; but it was not this which the Princess of Conde meant in her letter.  What she spoke about was, that some days after my visiting the Queen of England, I remembered the condition I had found her in, and had strongly represented the shame of abandoning her in that manner, which caused the parliament to send 40,000 livres to her majesty.  Posterity will hardly believe that a Princess of England, grand-daughter of Henry the Great, hath wanted a faggot, in the