'
The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, Smith, and
a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on a higher pinnacle;
and in return the powerful minister was not forgetful of the douceur
which well-tuned verses were accustomed to receive. He himself had tried
to be a poet, and in 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the
Kit-kat. His lines to a Dowager Countess of ----, are good enough to
make us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a specimen:--
'Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style;
Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle!
Nature did ne'er so equally divide
A female heart 'twixt piety and pride:
Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day,
And all in order at her toilet lay
Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint,
At once t'improve the sinner and the saint.'
A Maecenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well spoken of,
and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, as well as a clever
statesman. Halifax got his earldom and the garter from George I., and
died, after enjoying them less than a year, in 1715.
Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was associated in the impeachment
case in 1701, was a far better man in every respect.
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