Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

218 HAMPTON COURT
That is himself, and his dangerous work is when he
... at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad."
This came out years later, and later still Hervey's
feeble rejoinder. And meanwhile the peer was living
on asses' milk and biscuits, a miserable life enough, of
which almost the only pleasure was the honourable one
of being of service to Queen Caroline. He lived till
1743; and six years before, the great Duchess of Marlborough,
morebitter and more witty than ever in her
old age, speaking of him as " always with the King
and in vast favour," added " he has certainly parts and
wit,but is the most wretched profligate man that ever
was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face and not
a tooth in his head." In 1740 he at last obtained
political office, and in 1742 he was dismissed after
Walpole's fall. A wretched career was his, which
achieved nothing worthy, and only in its devotion to
the Queen was above contempt. He began life a Whig
and a Ministerialist: he died a " patriot " by the side
of those young statesmen, Lord Lyttelton and Cornet
Pitt, whom he had ridiculed.
And yet Lord Hervey was not the worst member of
the court which resided at Hampton Court in the early
years ofGeorgeII.'s reign. One feelsinclined to cry,like
Matthew Arnoldoftheparty, theGodwinsand thesordid
hangers-on, that surrounded Shelley, " What a set! "
The King, utterly brutal, licentious, coarse, unfeeling,
passionate, and reckless; the Queen, cynical,