* * * *

    The

   moralist, my dear niece, has said that—

   To which end we must try to identify the reign of King George I. and the manners of that era with these fables; for manners change with every age, and every age has its transitions of political and social manners:

   It was in the era of the two first Georges that Gay wrote and applied these fables, filled with diatribes against ministers, courtiers, and misers, and inveighing against court corruption and bribery.

   It was a period of transition, such as had before occurred, from feudal to monarchial, and now from monarchial to ministerial rule. We had entered into another phase—one of civil and religious liberty; but, at the same time, the royal court was a scene devoid of any graces: the kings could not speak our language, and their feminine favourites were the reverse of fair or virtuous; whilst domestic hate ruled in the palace. Power then ran into a new groove of corruption and bribery; and the scene, vile in itself, was made viler by exaggeration and the retaliations of one political party on the other, whilst either side was equally lauded by its own party. Therefore we may reasonably conclude that matters were not so bad as they were painted, and moreover that it was but a change and transition of evils, to play a part and disappear. The advent of the third George to the throne, and the rigid integrity of the first and second Pitt, reversed the story as read in these fables; the court became pure, the king true, the ministers honest, and the nation progressed from the miserable peace of Utrecht, in 1714, to the proud position we held on its centenary at Vienna, in 1814. We may grant, then, that Gay had reason on his side when he inveighed so bitterly against courts and kings; and, granting that, we may recognise the amelioration of the court of the present day, wholly free from corruption and presenting a school to be followed rather than contemned.

   In the fable of the 'Degenerate Bees,' Gay takes the part of the Tory ministry,—Oxford, Bolingbroke, Dean Swift, and Mat. Prior; and in the 'Ant in Office' he alludes to a Whig minister of that day. We must not be too hard on ministers. Kings and the nation have been open to bribes and assenting to French diplomacy,—

   Louis XI. purchased the retreat of Edward IV. in 1475, when he seized on the domains of King Réné—Provence, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Lorraine, and Burgundy from the domains of Charles the Bold; when we 

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