have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My liberty, my
ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will sufficiently
counterbalance the crowds of Downing Street. I am so sick of it all,
that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving England in the
spring.

The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert was forced to
give up the contest and be shelved with a peerage. In 1742, he was
created Earl of Orford, and resigned. The wonder is that, with a mortal
internal disease to contend with, he should have faced his foes so long.
Verses ascribed to Lord Hervey ended, as did all the squibs of the day,
with a fling at that 'rogue Walpole.'

'For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire,
You are out of the frying-pan into the fire:
But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend,
I tremble to think how these changes may end.'

Horace, notwithstanding an affected indifference, felt his father's
downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite of a cold,
taken in an unaired house; for the prime minister now quitted Downing
Street for Arlington Street. The court was crowded, he found, with old
ladies, the wives of patriots who had not been there for 'these twenty
years,' and who appeared in the accoutrements that were in vogue in
Queen Anne's time. 'Then', he writes, 'the joy and awkward jollity of
them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are
always looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several
on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes), and
they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. They seem to have
said to themselves, twenty years ago, "Well, if ever I do go to court