Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/872

744 even those who sympathized with the claims of the House of Hanover. The simple life of George III, without state, with little dignity, and so homely as not to appeal to the imagination of the people, served as an admirable field for ridicule. There is not any evidence that Peter Pindar personally hated the King, and that his politics were anti-Hanoverian or anti-royal. He attacked the King and Court because he knew it would pay—that was his main inducement, another was equally unworthy. He hoped that the Government would give him some sinecure office, or some bribe in money to silence his slanderous tongue.

He began his assault on the private life of the King in the Lousiad, a poem in five cantos, the first four published in 1785, and the last in 1795. The subject was disgusting. It turned upon the King having discovered a specially nasty parasitical insect on his plate, and on thereupon ordering the shaving of the heads of his cooks and scullions, grooms of the kitchen, servants of the pantry, etc., to the number of fifty-one. A young man in the kitchen, John Bear, refusing to submit to this indignity, was dismissed his place.

The subject was inexhaustible, and these attacks on Royalty sold and brought in much money. Accordingly he worked indefatigably at it. He was supplied with plenty of information by the favourites of the Prince of Wales, who himself relished these attacks upon his father.

Peter Pindar jeered at the King's little note-book in which he dotted down his observations.