Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/255

pole's day. He himself was an adept in the art of polite adulation, and wrote without a blush the obliging comparison between the Princess Amelia and Venus (greatly to the disparagement of Venus), which the flattered lady found in the hand of the marble Apollo at Stowe. "All women like all or any praise," said Lord Byron, who had reason to know the sex. The Princess Amelia, stout, sixty, and "strong as a Brunswick lion," was pleased to be designated as a "Nymph," and to be told she had routed Venus from the field. Walpole also presented to Madame de Boufflers a "petite gentillesse," when she visited Strawberry Hill; and it became the painful duty of the Due de Nivernois to translate these lines into French, on the occasion of Miss Pelham's grand fete at Esher Place. The task kept him absorbed and preoccupied most of the day, "lagging behind" while the others made a cheerful tour of the farms, or listened to the French horns and hautboys on the lawn. Finally, when all the guests were drinking tea and coffee in the Belvidere, poor Nivernois was delivered of his verselets, which were received with a polite