Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/292

NO. 8. If it be adjudged supererogatory that the Author should find any room on his pages for a pseudo adjunct to the republic of letters, whose conduct all the respectable writers of the same æra concur in reprobating, particularly the Author of Pursuits of Literature, who is extremely severe on this obscure person, as he calls Wolcot, and condemns in pointed terms, the general tendency of his writings; but not having thought it worth while to bestow any letter-press on him in detail, except with reference to the conceited admission, that kings may be necessary in a state, just as a nail or a peg is to some building, the preceding glances at a few others of his mercenary compositions may not appear misplaced; especially when it is considered that he got his bread mostly by hacking, with a blunt edge, the aforesaid nail or peg (if we must use his own degrading idea.) It was the coincidence between Junius and a libeller by trade, in the odious vocation of injuring George 3rd as much as they could in the esteem of his subjects, that insensibly induced an association of persons therefrom. They either knew nothing of his real character, or they were fraudulent enough to affect an ignorance convenient for their purposes; but the depravity of the Aristocrat, who may be concluded to have had frequent opportunities of assuaging his bile at St. James's, exceeds that of a needy scribbler, who himself had no auricular knowledge of his insulted Sovereign.

Allowing for the variance in chronology, there is a passage in the works of his fellow labourer that precludes comment, and should have been especially commended to the attention of Junius, if he professed to believe in a future state of retribution, viz. How could I hold aloft my tuneful head. ''Or proudly hope at doomsday to be read? ''