[39] I cannot forbear giving—though only in a note—one burst of his fervid oratory, when his powers were at their best:
“It was the boast of Augustus—it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost—that he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble—a praise not unworthy of a great prince, and to which the present reign [George IV.] has its claim also. But how much nobler will be our Sovereign’s boast, when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence.” Speech, on Present State of the Law, February 7, 1828.
[40] William Gifford, b. 1757; d. 1826. I give the birth-date named by himself in his autobiography, though the new National Dictionary of Biography gives date of 1756. Gifford—though not always the best authority—ought to have known the year when he was born.
Ed. Quarterly Review, 1809-1824; Juvenal, 1802; Ben Jonson, 1816.
Some interesting matter concerning the early life of Gifford may be found in Memoirs of John Murray, vol. 1, pp. 127 et seq.
[41] John Wilson Croker, b. 1780; d. 1857, wrote voluminously for the Quarterly Review; Life of Johnson (ed.), 1831; his Memoirs and Correspondence, 1885.
[42] Very much piquant talk about George IV. and his friends may be found in the Journal of Mary Frampion from 1779 until 1846. London: Sampson Low & Co., 1885.
[43] English Lands and Letters, vol. iii., pp. 168-70.
[44] Queen Charlotte, d. 1818.
[45] W. S. Landor, b. 1775; d. 1864. Gebir, 1798; Imaginary Conversations, 1824; Foster’s Life, 1869.