In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen. It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous as the chariot they help to “waft down,”—in which, not the chariot, but the chorus, there is the assurance that
“The bliss that spotless patriots feel
Is kindred to the bliss above,”—
so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of heaven.
The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that he has been the cause of bringing them down
“To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”
After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to shed heavenly influences over Windsor, while he remains to hold a little colloquy with the Druids, “Britain’s old philosophers,” as he calls them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have startled the Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the aforesaid Druids—
“Still enamored of their ancient haunts,
Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round
Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks,”