[211] Peter Pindar: _Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians_. Certainly on no occasion made public did George III ever show a royal generosity. He saved his old master, Goupy, from a debtor's prison, and appointed his fencing master Redman, who had fallen upon evil days, a Poor Knight of Windsor; he released a man who had been imprisoned twelve years in Dorchester Jail for a debt of £100 by paying that amount; and one day, having taken shelter in a cottage where a joint was suspended before the fire by a string, he left two guineas behind him to "buy a jack." "I never considered the King as munificent," Lord Carlisle remarked; "when he gave the kettledrums costing £1,500 to the Blues, he was deranged. Before his illness he stopped all the hunt to give an old man something for opening a gate at Bray Wick: after a long search for his purse he produced from it a penny and bestowed it on the man. He gave a _fête_ in the Castle to all the Eton school boys. It consisted of a very long concert of sacred music with nothing to eat or drink."[212] [212] Lord Carlisle: _Reminiscences_. [Illustration: _From an old print_ THE KING RELIEVING PRISONERS IN DORCHESTER GAOL] It was not so much that George III was not good-natured, but that he lacked the imagination that might have assisted him to a more worthy generosity. He could never divest himself of a care for trifling sums of money, and while he would authorize, nay encourage, the spending of millions to further some matter upon which he had set his heart, he would sit at home and work out the cost of his son's household to a halfpenny,[213] and take great care that his agricultural hobby should show a balance on the right side, which last consideration aroused again and again the ire of Peter Pindar. [213] "I take this opportunity of enclosing to you a list of the servants that I find absolutely necessary to place about my third and fourth sons; now I put two preceptors to attend them. I have very carefully brought the expense as low as the nature of the thing would permit. £ Preceptors {Mr. de Budé 350 {Rev. Mr. Hooke 300 Page of the Back Stairs {Mannorlay,} each, salary £80} 200 {Meller, } for mourning £20} Housekeeper 50 For keeping three housemaids, each £20 60 Porter 30 Watchman 25 Writing Master 100 _____ £1,115 _____ "The King to Lord North, August 22, 1772."