Thus from poor hovels gleaning information,
To serve as future treasure for the nation.
So said Peter Pindar; and in this rôle king George was represented not unfrequently in satirical prints. On the 10th of February Gillray illustrated the quality of “Affability” in a picture of one of these rustic encounters. The king and queen, taking their walk, have arrived at a cottage, where a very coarse example of English peasantry is feeding his pigs with wash. The scene is represented in our cut No. 227. The vacant stare of the countryman betrays his confusion at the rapid succession of questions—“Well, friend, where a’ you going, hay?—What’s your name, hay?—Where do you live, hay?—hay?” In other prints the king is represented running into ludicrous adventures while hunting, an amusement to which he was extremely attached. One of the best known of these has been celebrated equally by the pen of Peter Pindar and by the needle of Gillray. It was said that one day while king George was following the chase, he came to a poor cottage, where his usual curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of an old woman making apple dumplings. When informed what they were, he could not conceal his astonishment how the apples could have been introduced without leaving a seam in their covering. In the caricature by Gillray, from which we take our cut No. 228, the king is represented looking at the process of dumpling making through the window, inquiring in astonishment, “Hay? hay? apple dumplings?—how get the apples in?—how? Are they made without seams?” The story is told more fully in the following verses of Peter Pindar, which will serve as the best commentary on the engraving:—
THE KING AND THE APPLE DUMPLING.
Once on a time a monarch, tired with whooping,
Whipping and spurring,
Happy in worrying
A poor, defenceless, harmless buck
(The horse and rider wet as muck),
From his high consequence and wisdom stooping,