Jameson, Anna: Memoirs of the beauties of the Court of Charles the Second, with their portraits: after Sir Peter Lely and other eminent painters$dillustrating the diaries of Pepys, Evelyn, Clarendon and other contemporary writers (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861)

MRS. MIDDLETON.

“ Pictures like these, dear Madam, to desigu,
Asks no firm hand and no unerring line;
Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
Some flying touch, alone can hit them right.”
Pope.

It is evident, from the number of portraits which exist of this
Beauty” yw excellence, and the frequent allusions to her in con-
temporary memoirs^ that she must have been a very admired and
distinguished personage in her day; yet of her family and life but
little is ascertained; and that little is not interesting. She is one of
the equivocal heroines of De Grammont; and her brief history; as
far as it is known; can hardly serve “to point a moral.” And yet
what is to be done?—to treat it seriously; were indeed to break
a butterfly upon a wheelshe fluttered through her day a with
insect pinions opening to the sun •” and; apparently; whatever was
most admirable and interesting about her; has been preserved in
the lovely pictures of her at Windsor and Althorpe. It is impos-
sible to look on them without wishing to know who and what was
the fair original. Yet if there had been no Lely; there would have
been no Mrs. Middleton •—at least; we could have spared all that
the pencil has not perpetuated.
She was the daughter of Sir Roofer Needham, a relation of the
o o y
excellent and celebrated Evelyn ; and married to Mr. Middleton;