Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/99

Rh "take physic science" was "exposed to feel what wretches feel" or—passionate and presumptuous men—writhing under their inability either to reply to, or to swallow such an operative bolus.

It is not discoverable that the Nobleman in allusion took any interest in the Lunar method of finding the Longitude. And while, he resented the being reminded of his tautological assurance, there seem to have been separate views at the Board. Had the King loudly expressed his dissatisfaction at what had passed, his Lordship was sufficiently a courtier to have taken his cue from it; as he would not have liked to have been involved in a serious affair for the sake of the Lunar junta, whom he might have discovered, for the first time, were making an excellent use of him: on which discovery he would have alleged that, being in the chair, it devolved on him to state the answer of the majority to Mr. William Harrison—that he regretted the turn the business took, and—making his acknowledgments according to etiquette, he would have left the Mathematicians to crawl out of the suffocating quicksand, into which they had plunged, head or heels foremost, by invoking every saint in the reformed calendar.