But when free to choose, she rejected him and married Lord Bellew. Her coquetry with Granville had been so notorious, that this marriage caused a great sensation at the time and no little scandal.
Rumour is loud, and every voice proclaims
Her violated faith and conscious flames.
The only catastrophe, however, which her falsehood occasioned, was the production of a long elegy, in imitation of Theocritus, which concludes Lord Lansdown's amatory effusions. He afterwards married Lady Anne Villiers, with whom he lived happily: after a union of more than twenty years, they died within a few days of each other, and they were buried together.
Lady Newburgh left a daughter by her first husband,[105] and a son and daughter by Lord Bellew: she lived to survive her beauty, to lose her admirers, and to be the object in her old age of the most gross and unmeasured satire; the flattery of a lover elevated her to a divinity, and the malice of a wit, whom she had ill-treated, degraded her into a fury and a hag—with about as much reason.
Prior's Chloe, the "nut-brown maid," was taken from the opposite extremity of society, but could scarce have been more worthless. She was a common woman of the lowest description, whose real name was, I believe, Nancy Derham,—but it is not a matter of much importance.
Prior's attachment to this woman, however unmerited, was very sincere. For her sake he quitted the high society into which his talents and his political connexions had introduced him; and for her, he neglected, as he tells us—
Whate'er the world thinks wise and grave,
Ambition, business, friendship, news,
My useful books and serious muse,
to bury himself with her in some low tavern for weeks together. Once when they quarrelled, she ran away and carried off his plate; but even this could not shake his constancy: at his death he left her all he possessed, and she—his Chloe—at whose command and in whose honour he wrote his "Henry and Emma,"—married a cobler![106] Such was Prior's Chloe.
Is it surprising that the works of a poet once so popular, should now be banished from a Lady's library?—a banishment from which all his sprightly wit cannot redeem him.—But because Prior's love for this woman was real, and that he was really a man of feeling and genius, though debased by low and irregular habits, there are some sweet touches scattered through his poetry, which show how strong was the illusion in his fancy:—as in "Chloe Jealous."
Reading thy verse, "who cares," said I,
"If here or there his glances flew?
O free for ever be his eye,
Whose heart to me is always true!"