Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/30

 14 THE WENTWORTH PAPERS.

succeeds, whose head or liberty at least is at stake. This is the last we hear of the matter.

Stepney was noted at the time for some very indifferent verse-making, upon which Lord Raby grounds a very neatly- turned compliment, worth quoting for its accompanying reference to a writer of wider fame : —

" 1705. February'' 7. I would have sent you ' Les Memoires de la cour de Vienne,' but the bookseller has it not at present. I thank you for your Latin inscription as it is altered and hope to see it upon the pillar or statue which is to be set up in Marlborough Square, that posterity may see that we had not only as great heroes as the Romans but as good writers. ( I am impatient for those verses you promise me of Prior's, who has an excellent knack of writing pleasant things and tells a story in verse the most agreeable that ever I knew."

Early in the year 1705, Frederick's Queen, Sophie Dorothee, sister of the Prince who succeeded to the English throne as Lord Raby writes to his cousin, Mrs. Hanbury ; —

" You would laugh heartily to see me in the mourning I am in at present for the Queen of Prussia. I have a crape hat band which, when my hat is on, trails two yards on the ground, so when it is off you may judge how long it is. Then I wear a long black cloak down to my feet, before which is a train belling (.-') of three yards long, and my page holds up my train as the ladies ; and my long crape hat band looks like the veils the ladies used to wear. Nothing is so dismal as the court, where you see abundance of gentlemen all in the same dresses. The King's cloak is seven yards long. The ladies come to court to see the King in black veils and black head clothes, with black crape peaks over their foreheads, and all their faces covered with black veils ; and you must imagine all this company in a great room covered top and bottom with black and but four candles in it. To make it more dismal the Queen's body lies in state at Hanover and

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