Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/46

Rh is daily becoming of less interest, and a dull affair to trace.—Taken altogether this Narrative becomes an epitome of the difficulties and discouragements which a man of uncommon genius, but born under an adverse planet, may have to contend with; not so much in the specimens he gives of his talents, as of that envy, the offspring of mediocrity, which John Harrison fully experienced from men whose names, with scarcely an exception, are nowhere to be found but on their college rolls, or parish registers. Had not George 3rd, with more consideration and consistency than was to be found in the mathematical chairs at Oxford or Cambridge, taken by the hand the first discoverer of the Longitude at sea, we might have been left to apostrophize this enterprizing man in the language of Johnson, on a far different occasion— Around his tomb let art and genius weep, But hear his fate, ye blockheads, hear and sleep.