on the 20th of February, 1767, "a bad cold with me to town, and, this being the first day I ventured out-of-doors, it was employed, as in duty bound, at court, it being a levee day. A buffoon lord in waiting—you may guess whom I mean was very busy marshaling the circle, and he said to me, without ceremony, Move forward! you clog up the doorway.' I replied, with as little, 'Did nobody clog up the king's doorway more than I have, there would be room for all honest men.' This brought the man to himself. When the king came up to me he asked, 'Why I did not come to town before?' I said, 'I understood there was no business going forward in the House in which I could be of service to his Majesty.' He replied, 'He supposed the severe storm of snow would have brought me up.' I replied, I was under cover of a very warm house.' You see by all this how unfit I am for courts." The circumstance is rather a notable one, that, of the persons who had the most reason to dislike or to be disliked by George the Third, two at least should have borne pleasing testimony, the one to his intelligence, and the other to his virtues. "Wilkes," writes Butler the "Reminiscent," "thought highly of the talents and firmness of the late king, and was persuaded that a ministry protected by him could not, without some singular blunder, or some event singularly unlucky, be shaken by any opposition." "I believe," writes Benjamin Franklin, "that had the king had a bad character, and Wilkes a good one, the latter might have turned the former out of his kingdom." Again Franklin writes, during the London riots in May, 1768: "What the event will be, God only knows. But some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best Constitution and the best king any nation was ever blessed with." END OF VOLUME II. APPENDIX, I. AD SERENISSIMUM GEORGIUM WALLIÆ PRINCIPEM IN OBITUM FREDERICI WALLIÆ PRINCIPIS. SPES, nuper altera, prima nunc Britanniæ ! Parere priùs assuesce; inoffenso pede Ducens volentem leniter Mentor tuus, Primum esse civem, deinde principem docet: Generosum et indolem, insitamque vim boni Procul, O! facessat; sed tamen veniet dies, Oblitus unquam, nec tamen nimis memor: GULIELMUS George. These once famous verses would seem to have been for the first time printed in a scarce volume, of which there is a copy in the King's Library at 'The edition of the Muse Etonenses by Prinsep, Rivington, MDCCLV., contains the following dedication: Vivo reverendo Gulielmo George, S. T. P. Decano Lincolniensi Nec non Collegii regalis præposito dignissimo per omnes literarum humaniorum gradus αἰεν ἀριστεύοντι ; hæc Etonensium suorum carmina Ipsius pleraque auspiciis condita, Optimo quondam præceptori. J. PRINSEP. the British Museum, entitled "Academiæ Cantabrigiensis Luctus in obitum Frederici celsissimi Walliæ Principis, Cantab. Mense Maii MDCCLI." Doctor George's Iambics are also to be found in an edition, by J. Prinsep, of the Musæ Etonenses, "Londini Typis Caroli Rivington MDCCLV." The former collection consists of ninety-four copies of verses, of different metres, in the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic languages. The same year, Oxford, not to be outdone in loyalty by the sister university, printed a similar volume at the Clarendon Press, entitled " Epicedia Oxoniensia in obitum celsissimi et desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliæ," also composed in different metres, and written in no fewer than the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Phoenician, Etruscan, Arabic, Syriac, and Welsh languages. Had Prince Frederick, instead of frequenting bullbaits and supping with royal midwives, held out, at the time of his death, the promise of the Black Prince or of Henry, Prince of Wales, — or even of Marcellus himself, his loss could not have been commemorated by more exaggerated eulogiums. Men of the world celebrated the event in briefer, perhaps in truer elegies, than those of men of the cloister : "Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead. I had much rather. |