where to begin and how to leave off. Not more than ten or twelve of her signatures are known, and these when they have occurred for sale have sold at prices varying from two guineas and a half to three guineas each.
On looking back at what I have written of this Story, I see little to omit or add—unless I wander into the satires of the time, and poison my pages with the gross libels of an age of lampoons. Not to have occasioned one satire or even more, would have been to say little for the reputation (of any kind) of a lady who lived within the atmosphere of Whitehall. Like her—
Who miss'd her name in a lampoon,
And sigh'd—to find herself decay'd so soon—
Nelly did not escape, and, though the subject of some very gross satires, she had this consolation, if she heeded them at all, that there were others who fared still worse, and perhaps deserved better.[1] Yet it would be wrong to close any sketch of her life without mentioning the present of the large Bible which she made to Oliver Cromwell's porter, when a prisoner in Bedlam,—often referred to by the
- ↑ Wycherley has "A Song: upon a vain foolish Coxcomb, who was banish'd the Court, for owning a witty Libel written by another."—Poems, 1704, p. 319.
