en though
he had been nominally conquered. The King felt bitterly about this, and
the grudge he bore to Walpole was of long endurance and envenomed anger.
The King and Queen would have got rid of him then if they could, Walpole
thought. "I have been much nearer than you think," he said to Lord
Hervey, "to throwing it all up and going to end my days at Houghton in
quiet." But he also told Hervey that he believed he was of more
consequence than any man before him ever was, or perhaps than any man
might ever be again, and so he still held on to his place. No doubt
Walpole meant that he was of more consequence than any man had been or
probably would be in England. He did not mean, as Lord Hervey would seem
to give out, that he believed he was a greater and more powerful man than
Julius Caesar. Lord Hervey's comment, however, is interesting. "With
regard to States and nations," he coldly says, "nobody's understanding is
so much superior to the rest of mankind as to be missed in a week after
they have gone; and, with {92} regard to particulars, there is not a
great banker that breaks who does not distress more people than the
disgrace or retirement of the greatest minister that ever presided in a
Cabinet; nor is there a deceased ploughman who leaves a wife and a dozen
brats behind him that is not lamented with greater sincerity, as well as
a loss to more individuals, than any statesman that ever wore a head or
deserved to lose it." There is a good deal of wholesome, although
perhaps somewhat melancholy, truth in what Lord Hervey says. Perhaps we
ought not to call it melancholy; it ought rather to be considered
cheerful and encouraging, in the national sense. The world, some modern
writer has said, shuts up the shop for no man. Yet there is,
nevertheless, a tinge of melancholy in the thought of a great man
toiling, striving, giving up all his days and much of his nights to the
service of some cause or country, all the while firmly believing his life
indispensable to the success of the cause, the prosperity of the country;
and he dies, and the cause and the country go on just the same.

{93}

CHAPTER XXVII.

"ROGUES AND VAGABONDS."

[Sidenote: 1737--The English stage]

The condition of the English stage became a subject of some anxiety
about this time, and was made the occasion for the introduction of an
important Act of Parliament. The reader of to-day, looking back on the
dramatic literature of the sec