of employment, and presses forward to meet the succeeding hour before it arrives. Too great attention to money seems to be his capital failing: however, he is always just, and sometimes charitable, though seldom generous; but when we consider how rarely the liberality of princes is directed to the proper object, being usually bestowed on a rapacious mistress or an unworthy favourite, want of generosity, though it still continues a blot, ceases at least to be a vice of the first magnitude. Upon the whole, he has some qualities of a great prince, many of a good one, none which are essentially bad; and I am thoroughly convinced, that hereafter, when time shall have worn away those specks and blemishes which sully the brightest characters, and from which no man is totally exempt, he will be numbered among those patriot kings, under whose government the people have enjoyed the greatest happiness. EARL OF WALDEGRAVE. The king had fewer sensations of revenge, or, at least, knew how to hoard them better than any man who ever sat upon the throne. The insults he experienced from his own, and those obliged servants, never provoked him enough to make him venture the repose of his people, or his own. If any object of his hate fell in his way, he did not pique himself upon heroic forgiveness, but would indulge it at the expense of his integrity, though not of his safety. He was reckoned strictly honest; but the burning his father's will must be an indelible blot upon his memory; as a much later instance of his refusing to pardon a young man who had been condemned at Oxford for a most trifling forgery, contrary to all example when recommended to mercy by the judgemerely because Willes, who was attached to the Prince of Wales, had tried him, and assured him his pardon-will stamp his name with cruelty; though in general his disposition was merciful, if the offence was not murder. His avarice was much less equivocal than his courage: he had distinguished the latter early; it grew more doubtful afterwards; the former he distinguished very near as soon, and never deviated from it. His understanding was not near so defective as it was imagined; but though his character changed extremely in the world, it was without foundation; for whether he deserved to be so much ridiculed as he had been in the former part of his reign, or so respected as in the latter, he was consistent in himself, and uniformly meritorious or absurd. His other passions were Germany, the army, and women. Both the latter had a mixture of parade in them: he treated my Lady Suffolk, and afterwards Lady Yarmouth, as his mistresses, while he admired only the queen; and never described what he thought was a handsome woman, but he drew her picture. Lady Suffolk was sensible, artful, and agreeable, but had neither sense nor art enough to make him think her so agreeable as his wife. When she had left him, tired of acting the mistress, while she had in reality all the slights of a wife, and no interest with him, the opposition affected to cry up her virtue; and the obligations the king had to her for consenting to seem his mistress, while in reality she had confined him to mere friendship—a ridiculous pretence, as he was the last man in the world to have taste for talking sentiments, and that with a woman who was deaf. Lady Yarmouth was inoffensive, and attentive only to pleasing him, and to selling peerages whenever she had an opportunity. The queen had been admired and happy for governing him by address; and it was not then known how easily he was to be governed by fear. Indeed there were few arts by which he was not governed at some time or other of his life; for not to mention the Duke of Argyle, who grew a favourite by imposing himself upon him for brave; nor Lord Wilmington, who imposed himself upon him for the Lord knows what: the queen governed him by dissimulation, by affected tenderness and deference; Sir Robert Walpole by abilities and influence in the House of Commons; Lord Granville by flattering him in his German politics; the duke of Newcastle by teasing and betraying him; Mr. Pelham by bullying him,— the only man by whom Mr. Pelham was not bullied himself. Who, indeed, had not sometimes weight with the king, except his children and his mistresses? With them he maintained all the reserve and majesty of his rank. He had the haughtiness of Henry the Eighth, without his spirit; the avarice of Henry the Seventh, without his exactions; the indignities of Charles the First, without his bigotry for his prerogative; the vexations of King William, with as little skill in the management of parties; and the gross gallantry of his father, without his good nature or his honesty he might, perhaps, have been honest, if he had never hated his father, or had ever loved his son. : HORACE WALPOLE. GEORGE III *. His parts, though not excellent, will be found tolerable, if ever they are properly exercised. He is strictly honest, but wants that frank and open behaviour which makes honesty appear amiable. When he had a very scanty allowance, it was one of his favourite maxims, that men should be just before they are generous: his income is now very considerably augmented, but his generosity has not increased in proportion. His religion is free from all hypocrisy, but is not of the most charitable sort; he has rather too much attention to the sins of his neighbour. He has spirit, but not of the active kind; and does not want resolution, but it is mixed with too much obstinacy. He has great command of his passions, and will seldom do wrong, except when he mistakes wrong for right; but as often as this shall happen, it will be difficult to undeceive him, because he is uncommonly indolent, and has strong prejudices. His want of application and aversion to business would be far less dangerous was he eager in *This was written when his late majesty was twenty-one. Lord Waldegrave had then been three years his governor. the pursuit of pleasure; for the transition from pleasure to business is both shorter and easier than from a state of total inaction. He has a kind of unhappiness in his temper, which, if it be not conquered before it has taken too deep a root, will be a source of frequent anxiety. Whenever he is displeased, his anger does not break out with heat and violence; but he becomes sullen and silent, and retires to his closet, not to compose his mind by study or contemplation, but merely to indulge the melancholy enjoyment of his own ill humour. Even when the fit is ended, unfavourable symptoms very frequently return, which indicate that on certain occasions his royal highness has too correct a memory. Though I have mentioned his good and bad qualities, without flattery, and without aggravation, allowances should still be made, on account of his youth and his bad education: for though the bishop of Peterborough, now bishop of Salisbury, the preceptor; Mr. Stone, the sub-governor ; and Mr. Scott, the sub-preceptor, were men of sense, men of learning, and worthy good men, they had but little weight and influence. mother and the nursery always prevailed. The EARL OF WALDEGRAVE. The public conduct of this prince, and the tendencies of the political principles by which it was guided, might afford much scope for discussion, and will be differently estimated by opposite parties; but respecting his private and |