Sir Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, and all the Burkes, were potent accomplices in this kind and singular conspiracy; which, at last, was suddenly superseded by so obviously a dilapidated state of health in its object, as to admit of no further procrastination; and this uncommon struggle at length ended by the entrance at Windsor of a successor to the invalid, in July, 1791; when, though with nearly as much regret as eagerness, Dr. Burney fetched his daughter from the palace; to which, exactly five years previously, he had conveyed her with unmixed delight.

It is here a duty—a fair and a willing one—to mention, that in an audience of leave-taking to which the Memorialist was admitted just before her departure, the Queen had the gracious munificence to insist that half the salary annexed to the resigned office should be retained: and when the Memorialist, from fullness of heart, and the surprise of gratitude, would have declined, though with the warmest and most respectful acknowledgments, a remuneration to which she had never looked forward, the Queen, without listening to her resistance, deigned to express the softest regret that it was not convenient to her to do more.[19]

All of ill health, fatigue, or suffering, that had worked the necessity for this parting, was now, at this moment of its final operation, sunk in tender gratitude, or lost in the sorrow of leave-taking; and the Memorialist could difficultly articulate, in retiring, a single sentence of her regret or her attachment: while the Queen, the condescending Queen, with weeping eyes, laid her fair hand upon the arm of the Memorialist, repeatedly and gently wishing her happy—“well, and happy!” And all the Princesses were graciously demonstrative of a concern nearly amounting to emotion, in pronouncing their adieus. Even the King, the benign King himself, coming up to her, with an evident intention to wish her well, as he entered the apartment that she was quitting, wore an aspect of so much pity for her broken health, that, utterly overpowered by the commiserating expression of his benevolent countenance, she was obliged, instead of murmuring her thanks, and curtseying her farewell, abruptly to turn from him to an adjoining window, to hide a grateful sensibility of his goodness that she could neither subdue, nor venture to manifest.

A minute or two he deigned to wait in silence her resumption of self-command, that he might speak to her; but finding she could not enough recover to look round, he moved silently, and not very fast, away; taking with him a fervency of prayers and blessings that issued from the heart’s core of his humblest, but most grateful subject.

No one, not even the bitterest of his political enemies, could have passed five years under the roof of his Majesty George the Third, and have seen him, whether overwhelmed by the most baneful of calamities, or brightened by the most unexampled popularity, always, through every vicissitude, save in the immediate paroxysms of his malady, himself unchanged, in zeal for his people; in tender affection for his family; and in the kindliest benevolence for all his household—without looking up to him with equal reverence and attachment, as a being of the most stainless intentional purity both in principle and in conduct.