An anecdote is told of the Duchess of Queensberry’s being forbid the court; which belongs to the literary history of the cleverest opera in our own or any other language—Gay’s famous production. Walpole, justly regarding himself as caricatured in the “Beggar’s Opera,” obtained the Duke of Grafton’s authority as Lord Chamberlain to suppress the representation of his next opera, “Polly.” Gay resolved to publish it by subscription, and his patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry, put herself at the head of the undertaking, and solicited every person she met, to subscribe. As the Duchess was handsome, a wit, and of the first fashion, she obtained guineas in all directions, even from those who dreaded to encourage this act of defiance. The Duchess’s zeal, however, increased with her success; and she even came to the drawing-room, and under the very eye of majesty solicited subscriptions for a play which the monarch had forbidden to be acted. When the King came into the drawing-room, seeing the Duchess very busy in a corner with three or four persons, he asked her what she was doing. She answered, “What must be agreeable, she was sure, to any body so humane as his Majesty, for it was an act of charity; and a charity to which she did not despair of bringing his Majesty to contribute.” This proceeding was so much resented, that Mr Stanhope, vice-chamberlain to the King, was sent in form to the Duchess to forbid her coming to court. The message was verbal; but she desired to send a written answer—wrote it on the spot—and thus furnished a document, whose style certainly exhibited more sincerity than courtiership. “That the Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King has given her so agreeable a command as to stay from court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and Queen. She hopes that, by such an unprecedented order as this, the King will see as few as he wishes at his court, particularly such as dare to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, and ought not, nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very highest compliment I could possibly pay the King, to endeavour to support truth and innocence in his house—particularly when the King and Queen both told me that they had not read Mr Gay’s play. I have certainly done right, then, to stand by my own words rather than his Grace of Grafton’s, who hath neither made use of truth, judgment, nor honour, through this whole affair, either for himself or his friends. “C. QUEENSBERRY.” When her Grace had finished this paper, drawn up, as Lord Hervey observes, “with more spirit than accuracy,” Stanhope requested of her to think again, and give him a more courtly message to deliver. The Duchess took her pen and wrote another, but it was so much more disrespectful, that he asked for the former one and delivered it.