Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/273

216 Sage who so quaintly pretended to search for an honest man, would have embraced, and thrust him into his tub, if there had been room enough for both. Such conduct may be concluded to have been a source of consolation to this excellent person in life's closing scene; and was wanting to be repeated with a sonorous blast, to pervade the tympanum of certain mathematical Professors at Oxford and Cambridge, whose consciences, to judge by their overt acts, were seared, as with a hot iron. Sir Thomas Lawrence, thought there was a deal more good than bad in human nature; and certainly such men as George Graham would bear him out. Those of a contrary opinion, allege that they should be regarded as an Oasis in the desert. Leaving the point to be decided by more competent abilities, we would observe that Gray, in his far-famed elegy chaunts—

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen; And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

To imply that the inherent virtues of some of—

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet,"

were wholly lost and unknown, from the obscurity of the precincts. In contradiction to the sentiment, however, this philanthropist flourished in the heart of London—in Fleet-street, to wit! and yet his merit was never enquired after, except in his profession:—it came under the cognizance of a meeting of Admirals and Civilians, among whom professed Scholars likewise took their seats; and can it be supposed their acquisitions under Euclid, Aristotle, or Quintilian, had left them so ignorant of

"The proper study of mankind,"

which the poet says, is Man; as not to know that, of all men living, John Harrison was the last person whose concerns Graham could have been expected to take an interest in promoting, which yet he did with a fraternal solicitude! that might have made a convert even of Swift, who, in the legacy his hatred left to the world (the verses on his own death) has this cogent question—

If, in a battle you should find