There’s nothing can hurt you without or within
When you’ve beef in your belly and Punch in your skin.
It is true that certain discordant notes troubled from time to time this Georgian harmony. The house-steward killed the black page in the passage; and the duke’s sons themselves were unsatisfactory; even the favourite son, Lord George, who was the apple of his father’s eye, fell into disgrace and was court-martialled on a charge of disobedience and cowardice. “I always told you,” said Lord John on hearing of this, “that George was no better than myself.” This affair of the battle of Minden must have been a heavy blow to the duke, but although Lord George was not exonerated he retained all his father’s doting affection. Still, the mud had been slung at him and not a little had stuck. The two other sons were a source of sorrow: Lord John, after devoting his youth to cricket, went off his head; and Lord Middlesex, the eldest of the three, was an altogether deplorable character, prompting these verses, based upon an old saying about the family:
Folly and sense in Dorset’s race
Alternately do run,
As Carey one day told his Grace
Praising his eldest son.
But Carey must allow for once
Exception to this rule,
For Middlesex is but a dunce,