Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
xvi
PREFACE.

wrong premises (according to. Locke's definition of a madman) instead of taking the sense of the meeting, either individually or collectively, and then embodying what might appear to be the prevalent desire, he produced from his pocket a string of resolutions ready prepared, and, as the Watchmakers who were of this Commission told the Candidate, assumed that they were adopted without a dissentient voice, giving them, no opportunity, to show him his mistake (if it was one.[1])

    missible injury." The character of Colonel Bath, in Fielding's Amelia, may be adduced as a fit adjunct to the aforegoing; we learn, that he was at length killed in a duel, by a Gentleman, "who told him, he differed in opinion with him." Of our existing and conspicuous public men, the scrutiny need not be carried far to find Sir Andrew Agnew classes, in this particular, with the Aristocrat of Caledon, brought forward. For the Editor of a weekly paper, after commenting on the gloomy and ascetic character which the mistaken Baronet would attach to Christianity; by denying the laborious part of the Community any recreation out of doors on a Sunday; remarks that—"He seems to have no conception that any man can, or ought to be allowed, to think differently from him." But we must spare the "bones and leather" of our hobby, lest we should be thought to lean to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls (the metempsychosis.) We apprehend, the wags will be discovering something blockish and stupid in Sir Andrew's physiognomy, at the first view, as was remarked of old, in Socrates, "the wisest of men."

  1. The Commissioners, under this Act, were—James, Earl of Morton, Lord Charles Cayendish, Lord Willoughby, of Parham, the Rev. John Michell, of Cambridge, George Lewis Scott, esquire, Mr. James Short, optician, Messrs. Alex-