Queen [to Lord Lifford.] Eh bien! my Lord Lifford, dites-nous un peu comment cela est arrive.  I cannot imagine what he had to do to be putting his nose there.  Seulement pour un sot voyage avec ce petit mousse, eh bien?

Lord Lifford. Madame, on scait quelque chose de celui de Mon.  Maran, qui d’abord qu’il a vu les voleurs s’est enfin venu a grand galoppe a Londres, and after dat a waggoner take up the body and put it in his cart.

     Queen. [to PRINCESS EMILY.] Are you not ashamed,
     Amalie, to laugh?

     Princess Emily. I only laughed at the cart, mamma.

     Queen. Oh! that is a very fade plaisanterie.

     Princess Emily. But if I may say it, mamma, I am not very
     sorry.

     Queen. Oh! fie donc!  Eh bien! my Lord Lifford!  My God! where is
     this chocolate, Purcel?

As Mr. Croker remarks, Queen Caroline’s breakfast-table, and her parentheses, reminds one of the card-table conversation of Swift:—­

    ’The Dean’s dead:  (pray what are trumps?)
     Then Lord have mercy on his soul! 
     (Ladies, I’ll venture for the vole.)
     Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall;
     (I wish I knew what king to call.)’

Fragile as was Lord Hervey’s constitution, it was his lot to witness the death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he had penned the jeu d’esprit just quoted, in which there was, perhaps, as much truth as wit.

The wretched Queen Caroline had, during fourteen years, concealed from every one, except Lady Sundon, an incurable disorder, that of hernia.  In November (1737) she was attacked with what we should now call English cholera.  Dr. Tessier, her house-physician, was called in, and gave her Daffey’s elixir, which was not likely to afford any relief to the deep-seated cause of her sufferings.  She held a drawing-room that night for the last time, and played at cards, even cheerfully.  At length she whispered to Lord Hervey, ‘I am not able to entertain people.’  ’For heaven’s sake, madam,’ was the reply, ’go to your room:  would to heaven the king would leave off talking of the Dragon of Wantley, and release you!’ The Dragon of Wantley was a burlesque on the Italian opera, by Henry Carey, and was the theme of the fashionable world.

The next day the queen was in fearful agony, very hot, and willing to take anything proposed.  Still she did not, even to Lord Hervey, avow the real cause of her illness.  None of the most learned court physicians, neither Mead nor Wilmot, were called in.  Lord Hervey sat by the queen’s bed-side, and tried to soothe her, whilst the Princess Caroline joined in begging him to give her mother something to relieve her agony.  At length, in utter ignorance of the case, it was proposed to give her some snakeroot, a stimulant, and, at the same time, Sir Walter Raleigh’s cordial; so singular was it thus to find that great mind still influencing a court.  It was that very medicine which was administered by Queen Anne of Denmark, however, to Prince Henry; that medicine which Raleigh said, ’would cure him, or any other, of a disease, except in case of poison.’