It is a fact, at which we need not be surprised, that the most cutting satires against the King, as led by his wife, were from the pens of female writers--or said to be so. And this is likely enough; for in no quarter is there so much contempt for a man who leans upon, rather than supports, his wife. The court certainly offered good opportunity for the satirists to make merry with. At the court of Caroline, it must be confessed, there was not much female delicacy, and still less manly dignity--even in the presence of the Queen herself. Thus we hear, for instance, of Caroline, one evening, at Windsor, asking Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend where they had dined that day? My lord replied that he had dined with Lord and Lady Trevor, an aged couple, and the lady remarkable for her more than ordinary plainness. Whereupon Sir Robert, with considerable latitude of expression, intimated, jokingly, that his friend was paying political court to the lord, in order to veil a court of another kind addressed to the lady. Lord Townshend, not understanding raillery on such a topic, grew angry, and in defending himself against the charge of seducing old Lady Trevor, was not content with employing phrases of honest indignation alone, but used illustrations that no ‘lord’ would ever think of using before a lady. Caroline grew uneasy, not at the growing indelicacy of phrase, but at the angry feelings of the Peachum and Lockit of the court; and ‘to prevent Lord Townshend’s replying, or the thing being pushed any further, only laughed, and began immediately to talk on some other subject.’[4] The mention of the heroes in Gay’s opera serves to remind me that, in 1729, the influence of the Queen was again exerted to lead the King to do what he had not himself dreamed of doing. Sir Robert Walpole must have been more ‘thin-skinned’ than he is usually believed to have been, if he could really have felt wounded, as it would appear was the case, by the alleged satire of the ‘Beggars’ Opera.’ The public would seem to have been the authors of such satire rather than Gay, for they made application of many passages, to which the writer of them probably attached no personal meaning.