The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiums
than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
ceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killed
by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and
wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
successor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the