Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/128

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That the unprincipled satirist, Wolcot, or Peter Pindar, should have got his bread by the quarto catchpenny scurrility so often levelled at this ornament to the House of Brunswic, while an action so much to be admired, drifts unheeded "down the stream of time" is a caustic inuendo on those titled, or privileged, functionaries of the Court, whose discernment was unequal to the preservation of "a trait" so novel in a monarch. The transactions at the Observatory, it may be said, were wholly connected with the private life of the King, and no more to be looked for from such a quarter than his experiments in agriculture, which, though not private, were happily not dependant for our knowledge of them on Rosencrantz or Guildenstern;[1] but when William Harrison saw his Majesty every

    shade of Newton, whose off hand rests on an armillary sphere, the one surcharged with the discoveries of nine days in each Lunar month, "wind and weather permitting," proving lighter than inflammable gas, kicks the beam with a jerk that ejects the contents into "Limbo Lake," which, by Apollo's leave, we find with a fall ten thousand fathom deep below—and Mr. Croker looking into the abyss through the optics Dr. Maskelyne lent him, is overpowered and blinded, by the vapours from an immense heterogeneous mass, emitting Lunar corruscations—

    —"which more damnation doth upon them pile."

  1. Extract from the debates, in April, 1815.—
    "Mr. Whitbread enquired respecting a commission which had been granted to Lord Yarmouth, Mr. Nash, and Mr. Bicknell. Lord Yarmouth in explanation, said, that many years ago his Majesty had determined to keep many parts of the parks