ligious feeling, the tenderest sympathy,
the gentlest and bravest pity. Yorick, in the black and white of his
sacred calling's gown and bands, grins and leers like a disguised
satyr. His morality is a mummer's mask; his pathos is pretence; the
only thing truly Irish about him is his humor, his ceaseless wit, the
unfailing sparkle of his fancy.

[Sidenote: 1760--A levee under difficulties]

Quite suddenly the ghastly tragicomedy of the King's life came to an
end. There was, we are told, a strange affectation of an incapacity to
be sick that ran through the whole royal family, which they carried so
far that few of them were more willing to own any other member of the
family ill than to acknowledge themselves to be so. "I have known the
King," says Hervey, "get out of his bed choking with a sore throat, and
in a high fever, only to dress and have a levee, and in five minutes
undress and return to his bed till the same ridiculous farce of health
was to be presented the next day at the same hour." It must be owned,
however, that George made a stout fight against ill-health, and if he
shammed being well, he kept up the sham for a good long time. He came
into the world more than a dozen years before Lord Hervey was born, and
he contrived to keep his place in it for some seventeen years after
Lord Hervey had died. Time had nearly come round with George as with
Shakespeare's Cassius; his death fell very near to his birthday.
George was born on October 30, 1683, and on October 25, 1760, he was on
the verge of completing his seventy-seventh year. On October 25, 1760,
he woke early, as was his custom, drank his chocolate, inquired as to
the quarter whence the wind came, and talked of a walk in the {304}
garden. That walk in the garden was never taken. The page who
attended on the King had left the room. He heard a groan and the sound
of a fall. [Sidenote: 1727-1760--Passed away] He came back, and found
the King a helpless heap upon the floor. "Call Amelia," the dying man
gasped; but before Amelia could be called he was dead. Amelia, when
she came, being a little deaf, did not grasp at once the full extent of
what had happened, and bent over her father only to learn in the most
startling and shocking manner that her father was dead. The Countess
of Walmoden, too, was sent for. It would seem as if the ample charms
of the Countess of Walmoden, which had delighted George so much while
he lived, might have some power to