Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/197

Rh be remembered—for, where the King took displeasure she would mitigate and appease his mind; where men were out of favour she would bring them in his grace; for many that had highly offended she obtained pardon; of great forfeitures she gat men remission; and finally, in many weighty suits she stood more in great stead."—Wise and virtuous Thomas More,—pious and manly Thomas Tenison,—pretty and witty—and surely with much that was good in her—.*

Note.—I have great pleasure in extracting the following defence of Nelly from the preface to Douglas Jerrold's drama of "Nell Gwyn, or the Prologue," a capitally constructed piece, and one true throughout to its heroine and the manners of the age in which Nelly lived:—"Whilst we may safely reject as unfounded gossip many of the stories associated with the name of Nell Gwyn, we cannot refuse belief to the various proofs of kind-heartedness, liberality, and—taking into consideration her subsequent power to do harm—absolute goodness of a woman mingling (if we may believe a passage in Pepys) from her earliest years in the most depraved scenes of a most dissolute age. The life of Nell Gwyn, from the time of her connexion with Charles II. to that of her death, proved that error had been forced upon her by circumstances, rather than indulged from choice. It was under this impression that the present little comedy was undertaken: under this conviction an attempt has been made to show some glimpses of the 'silver lining’ of a character, to whose influence over an unprincipled voluptuary we owe a national asylum for veteran soldiers, and whose brightness shines with the most amiable lustre in many actions of her life, and in the last disposal of her worldly effects."