parting." The Duchess was on her way to France, I believe for the first time since she landed at Dover, and the language employed by the rival ladies is at least characteristic. Nelly vindicates her fidelity—
Let Fame, that never yet spoke well of woman,
Give out I was a strolling ——— and common;
Yet have I been to him, since the first hour,
As constant as the needle to the flower.
The Duchess threatens her with the people's "curse and hate," to which Nell replies:—
The people's hate, much less their curse, I fear
I do them justice with less sums a-year.
I neither run in court nor city's score,
I pay my debts, distribute to the poor.
Another single sheet in folio, dated a year earlier, records "A pleasant Battle between Tutty and Snapshort, the two Lap-Dogs of the Utopian Court." Tutty belonged to Nell Gwyn, and Snapshort to the Duchess, and the dialogue is supposed to allude to some real fray between the rival ladies. Tutty describes the mistress of Snapshort as one of Pharaoh's lean kine, and with a countenance so sharp as if she would devour him as she had devoured the nation, while Snapshort observes of Nelly that she hopes to see her once more upon a dunghill, or in her old calling of selling oranges and lemons.
