George I. had got into quarrel with his Prince of Wales, Fred's
Father,--him who is one day to be George II., always a rather
foolish little Prince, though his Wife Caroline was Wisdom's self
in a manner:--George I. had other much more urgent cares than that
of marrying his disobedient foolish little Prince of Wales's
offspring; and he always pleaded difficulties, Acts of Parliament
that would be needed, and the like, whenever Sophie Dorothee came
to visit him at Hanover, and urge this matter. The taciturn,
inarticulately thoughtful, rather sulky old Gentleman, he had
weighty burdens lying on him; felt fretted and galled, in many
ways; and had found life, Electoral and even Royal, a deceptive
sumptuosity, little better than a more or less extensive "feast of
SHELLS," next to no real meat or drink left in it to the hungry
heart of man. Wife sitting half-frantic in the Castle of Ahlden,
waxing more and more into a gray-haired Megaera (with whom Sophie
Dorothee under seven seals of secrecy corresponds a little, and
even the Prince of Wales is suspected of wishing to correspond);
a foolish disobedient Prince of Wales; Jacobite Pretender people
with their Mar Rebellions, with their Alberoni combinations;
an English Parliament jangling and debating unmelodiously, whose
very language is a mystery to us, nothing but Walpole in dog-latin
to help us through it: truly it is not a Heaven-on-Earth
altogether, much as Mother Sophie and her foolish favorite, our
disobedient Prince of Wales, might long for it! And the Hanover
Tail, the Robethons, Bernstorfs, Fabrices, even the Blackamoor
Porters,--they are not beautiful either, to a taciturn Majesty of
some sense, if he cared about their doings or them. Voracious,
plunderous, all of them; like hounds, long hungry, got into a rich
house which has no master, or a mere imaginary one. "MENTERIS
IMPUDENTISSIME," said Walpole in his dog-latin once, in our Royal