Jennings.--La Triste Heritière.--Elizabeth, Countess of
Rochester.--Retribution and Reformation.--Conversion.--Beaux
without Wit.--Little Jermyn.--An Incomparable Beauty.--Anthony
Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer.--The Three Courts.--'La
Belle Hamilton.'--Sir Peter Lely's Portrait of her.--The
Household Deity of Whitehall.--Who shall have the Calèche?--A
Chaplain in Livery.--De Grammont's Last Hours.--What might he
not have been?


It has been observed by a French critic, that the Mémoires de Grammont
afford the truest specimens of French character in our language. To this
it may be added, that the subject of that animated narrative was most
completely French in principle, in intelligence, in wit that hesitated
at nothing, in spirits that were never daunted, and in that incessant
activity which is characteristic of his countrymen. Grammont, it was
said, 'slept neither night nor day;' his life was one scene of incessant
excitement.

His father, supposed to have been the natural son of Henry the Great, of
France, did not suppress that fact, but desired to publish it: for the
morals of his time were so depraved, that it was thought to be more
honourable to be the illegitimate son of a king than the lawful child of
lowlier parents. Born in the Castle of Semeac, on the banks of the
Garonne, the fame of two fair ancestresses, Corisande and Menadame, had
entitled the family of De Grammont to expect in each successive member
an inheritance of beauty. Wit, courage, good nature, a charming address,
and boundless assurance, were the heritage of Philibert de Grammont.
Beauty was not in his possession; good nature, a more popular quality,
he had in abundance: