Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/288

NO. 8 the most virtuous Monarch in our annals since Alfred swayed the sceptre. It comes in the form of a surmise and insinuation, for not a solitary fact bears out the sweeping charge.—"The Earl [Paulet] has won the royal smile, and is made a Lord of the bedchamber; but as capricious inconstancy is a prominent feature in the Brunswic family, a royal frown may be at no great distance:" And should the Monarch turn from sweet to sour, Which Cometh oft to pass in half an hour. In what history, memoirs, or diary, or collection of anecdotes, had he found that the individuals of the royal family are more changeable than other men? If he could have laid his hand on his authority, where was it? Instead of such an explanation, you find only the rhymes just quoted. The late Sir John Barton, who had been above forty-six years attached to his present Majesty (William IV.) gave a very different account from that of this mercenary calumniator; leaving the inference, that no distinguished family in the kingdom could be quoted as more an example of consistency than the House of Brunswic.—We had almost forgotten, that Wolcot, in trying to make a miser of the King, actually accuses him of omitting the dot over the i, in writing, to save his ink. It has often happened to the writer of this, as also to forget the stroke through the t: yet it would not follow that he is sparing of his ink, and his apprehension is lest the reader should be of the same opinion.—The Author of the Rape of the Lock was never thought a miser, though his friend, Swift, calls him "paper sparing Pope." The Dean has not mentioned any deficiency in his hospitality, when he was his guest. If "he saved five shillings in five years," by writing his compositions on the backs of letters, yet when Frederic, Prince of Wales, honoured him with his company to dinner, he set out his table as was befitting, without those marked omissions that seldom fail to denote the muckworm: Like Fielding's Lovegold, who being to give an entertainment to please his mistress, considers it would be advisable to have, in the first place, a large suet pudding, to