Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/139

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but with that discretion which the impossibility of coming forward in the regal character imposed on him, may be considered as a fair specimen of the fruit "the tree should be known by" who is there, of whatever party, the republican excepted, but will regret that the returns of revolving seasons, from the same stem, like those of the productive plant in the wilderness, "were wasted on the desert air."—That true knight-errant, as Smollet calls[1] Henry IV. of France, was fortunate in his Sully; in England the splendid talents of Dr. Johnson, were followed through their minor ramifications by a Boswell; since that commented on extensively by Mr. Croker; and we should covet the sayings and doings of the conqueror at Waterloo, when the batoon and gorget are laid aside; for this is as it should be; but it cannot be too much regretted that the busy idleness[2] of Prince Frederic's castle-building court should have been daily registered by a consummate politician of the Walpole school (whose reveries, whatever importance might attach to them in their day, and before the French revolution gave those affairs a kick head over heels, we are now in danger of falling asleep over) while the meritorious Grandson of George II. has the vault closed over him, without either the courtier, or the man of business, the philosopher, or any of the contemporary literati, having favoured us with some few particulars of a

  1. In his Travels.
  2. Laborious idleness their time employs.—Spectator.