Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/295

 Fourth as king and regent was recklessly extravagant, but his expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred examples of his selfish nature might be given, but cui bono? Everything he could get hold of, which could minister to his own personal gratification, he grasped with avidity. In this spirit he appropriated the jewels and spent on himself the whole of the money belonging to his late father's estate, amounting to £120,000. His ministers did not dare to oppose his greed, or tell him that this money belonged to the Crown, and not to himself as an individual. He acted precisely in the same manner with regard to his mother's jewels, of which she possessed a large quantity. Those she received from George III. she left by will to the king; the rest she gave to her daughters; in spite of which bequest, her selfish son appropriated the whole to himself as his own personal private property.

An admirable likeness of this most selfish of royal or private personages has been drawn by a master hand. "To make a portrait of him," says Thackeray, "at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognisable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races, and so forth, you find you have nothing—nothing but a coat and wig, and a mask smiling below it—nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One knew what they were like: what they would do in given circumstances: that on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough, good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom they hated firmly; passions and actions and individualities of their own. The sailor king who came after George was a man; the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he? I look through all his life, and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief