Bathʹsheba

The Duchess of Portsmouth, a favourite court lady of Charles II. The allusion is to the wife of Uriʹah the Hittite, criminally beloved by David (2 Sam. xi.). The Duke of Monmouth says:

“My father, whom with reverence yet I name,

Charmed into ease, is careless of his fame;

And, bribed with petty sums of foreign gold,

Is grown in Bathsheba’s embraces old.”

Dryden: Absalom and Achitophel, i. 707–10.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.