crested helmet by," was actually putting on
his helmet and walking on the stage, the
king having decided on war with Spain, four
days after the appearance of Mr. Whitehead's
Ode, the hard truth being proclaimed "at
the usual places and with the usual solemnities."
This very intelligible announcement
at once knocked on the head "Janus," who
"with well-omen'd grace mounts the year's
revolving car, and forward turns his smiling
face, and longs to close the gates of war," and
all the rest of Mr. Whitehead's classical imagery;
but that, of course, did not signify; everybody
looked for their ode, and everybody might accept
it for as much as it was worth, which modern
bibliopoles would not rate at a very high figure.
A poet, let him be never so bad a one, was not
expected, in those days, to be a politician; and
whatever " Gallia, obstinately vain," intended
to do to the disadvantage of " Albion," was not
previously made known to the British
poet-laureate. Neither is that the case now; but
then, our poet-laureate occupies himself with
something better than political vaticination, and
his melodious thoughts are breathed in a strain
of which Mr. Whitehead had no conception.
The thing that did duty for poetry, in high
places, a hundred years ago, was, indeed, a
marvellously poor article; and when I think of
the number of Birthday Odes inflicted on George
the Third in the course of his very long reign, I
am not at all surprised at his going out of his
senses.

What strength of mind, for instance, could
stand the shock of a dose like this, administered
with even more than medical punctuality?
"Goddess of connubial love, sister thou and
wife of Jove, bid the genial powers that glide on
æther's all-pervading tide, or from the fount of
life that stream mingling with the solar beam,
bid them here, at Virtue's shrine, in chastest
bands of union join, till many a George and
many a Charlotte prove how much to Thee we
owe, queen of connubial love."

But Mr. Whitehead, as I have said, was not
the only poetical delinquent. The learned Miss
Carter—who, for her learning, and the use she
made of it, deserves all praise—was one of the
foremost of those who trespassed on Helicon a
hundred years ago. Hear how she begins a
sort of melody on the death of Mrs. Rowe:
    Oft did intrigue its guilty arts unite,
    To blacken the records of female wit:
    The tuneful song lost ev'ry modest grace,
    And lawless freedoms triumph'd in their place.
Yet Lord Littleton could apostrophise Miss
Carter after this fashion:

                                      Resume the lyre,
    Chauntress divine, and every Briton call
    Its melody to hear!

The present race of Britons may rejoice at
being out of the reach of Miss Carter's melody,
"Philomela" though she was contemporaneously
called. The only thing to be said in favour
of Miss Carter is, that she did not write the
Birthday Odes. There were plenty, however,
besides the laureate, who did. Witness an
anonymous poet, who, taking a base advantage
(in the St. James's Chronicle) of what it was
the fashion of that time to call " A late happy
occasion" (meaning, in this instance, the birth
of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the
Fourth), broke out as follows:

    Hail, happy morn, benign, that smiling brings
    A royal Briton's birthday on thy wings!

Of course the poem ended by calling this royal
Briton an "auspicious babe," upon whose head
"countless blessings" were supposed to wait;
and as George the Fourth did turn out so
auspicious, and was waited upon by so many blessings,
the prophecy of the poet—a true Vates
—was at least remarkable! Of the manner of
this excellent prince's birth, the following
account is given in the Annual Register, p. 1862:
"August 12.—This morning, at half an hour
past seven, the queen was happily delivered
of a prince. The person that waited on the
king with the news received a present of a five-
hundred pound bank bill." A large sum, though
a mere grain of dust compared with what his
royal highness cost the nation afterwards. "Just
after her majesty was safely in her bed, the
waggons with the treasure of the Hermione" (the war
with Spain was then in full swing) " entered St.
James's-street; on which his majesty and the
nobility went to the windows over the palace-gate to
see them, and joined their acclamations on two
such joyful occasions."—" On first opening some
of the chests at the Bank they were agreeably
surprised to find a bag full of gold instead of silver
in one of them; several were afterwards found
of the same kind, which made a very considerable
difference to the captors. A vast deal of
private property has likewise been discovered.
In short, this is, probably, the richest prize ever
brought into England, every private man's share
amounting to about nine hundred pounds." A
great quantity of finely chased plate was also
subsequently found amongst the treasure of the
Hermione, whose captors fared better, a thousand-fold,
than those who were at the storming of
Delhi: the reward for which operation, such as
it is, has only just been promised.

The court practices a hundred years ago
appears in curious juxtaposition. On Twelfth-day
(the Feast of the Three Kings), George the
Third, keeping up the mediæval religious custom,
"made the usual offering at the Chapel Royal
of gold, myrrh, and frankincense; but," adds
the chronicler, with a strong flavour of piety on
his lips, "there was no playing at hazard nor
any ball that night." No doubt the court
gamblers made up for their abstinence, on the
following night, with as much eagerness as
Falstaff showed in his rapid transition "from
praying to purse-taking."

A hundred years ago, purse-taking was at its
zenith. People could neither walk, ride, nor drive
in the streets of London or in the outskirts
without running the risk of being "stopped." The
month of January, 1762, supplies some examples
of this pleasant practice: " On Thursday night
last," says Lloyd's Evening Post, "as a
gentleman was going through Lincoln's Inn to