Bookish men have censured his neglect of literature—a reflection that at least is evidence that public utility is not the sole purport of their labours. But the advantages resulting to their country from authors must be better ascertained, before the imputation becomes a grave one. Had he pensioned half a dozen poets, and reaped their incense, the world had heard of nothing but his liberality. Let Kings prefer a Tillotson or a Seneca, nay, a Bacon or a Newton—if Bacon or Seneca will not forget their philosophy. Let them enrich such angelic men, when there are such angelic men, as Dr. Hales:[113] but money is as well hoarded as squandered on Boileaus and Benserades, on Atterburys and Drydens. In truth, I believe King George would have preferred a guinea to a composition as perfect as Alexander’s Feast. He certainly did not spare rewards to those who served their country. The profusion of favours which he suffered the Duke of Newcastle to shower on the University of Cambridge ought to disculpate the King from the charge of neglecting literature—it was the fault of that body if they were not learned.

If dying but moderately rich were as good a proof that he had not been avaricious, one of the greatest stains of his character would be effaced. By his will he gave fifty thousand pounds between his three surviving children, the Duke, Princess Amelia, and Mary, Princess of Hesse: a strong box, not to be opened, to Lady Yarmouth. The rest of his private fortune he had given by a deed, executed soon after the battle of Culloden, and unrevoked, to the Duke of Cumberland; who thence became heir to his jewels (sold afterwards to the successor for about fifty thousand pounds), and to his mortgages in Germany, amounting to about an hundred and fourscore thousand more:—a scanty pittance, if compared with what he must have amassed in a reign of three and thirty years. For part of that term he had received yearly to his own use an hundred thousand pounds from the civil list, and never less than fifty thousand; relinquishing the rest to the disposal of his Ministers for necessary services! At his accession he was worth three hundred thousand pounds. The revenues of Hanover exceeded five hundred thousand pounds a year; a sum he by no means expended. Reduce his savings to the lowest, discount his purchases, and swell Lady Yarmouth’s legacy, which was given out to be ten thousand pounds, to four times that sum; and allow two millions, which his last war is said to have cost him in defence of Hanover; it will still be difficult to believe that he did not die worth three hundred and fifty thousand pounds—what became of the rest, or how concealed if there was more, I pretend not to determine, nor even to guess.

The King himself had stated his late expense for Hanover still higher than I have set down. Mr. Onslow, the Speaker, showed me a remarkable paper, which had been brought to him at the King’s command, in the year 1758, by Baron Munchausen,[114] with whom Mr. Onslow had no acquaintance. In that memorandum, the King declared that he had then expended on the war 2,500,000l., the savings of thirty years; that he had borrowed above 200,000l. here in England, as much more in Germany, and that the Hanoverian Chancery of war owed 200,000 rix dollars. “The King,” concluded the paper, “can do no more himself towards the war.”—If he did more in the two following years, and it has never been pretended that he stopped his hand in 1758, his remaining ability to go on induces a suspicion that there was as little exactness observed in stating the rest of the account. On the envelope of Munchausen’s paper Mr. Onslow had written, “I could send no answer to this.”

The morning after the King’s death, the Duke of Cumberland sent for Lord Waldegrave, and told him, that if, as Lady Yarmouth believed, no new will had been made since that in Princess Amelie’s hands, his father had done greatly for him—not, however, so largely as he had once purposed: he had said to the Duke, “William, I see you will never marry; it is in vain to think of making a great establishment of a new branch through you: I shall do well for you for your life; yet not so large as I should have done in that case.” This certainly intimated a project of leaving his purchased Principalities in Germany to the Duke.

Lord Waldegrave in return showed his Royal Highness an extraordinary piece; it was endorsed, very private paper, and was a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his Grace informed the Earl,[115] that he had received by the messenger the copy of the will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it—“so,” adds the Duke, “we do not know whether it confirms the other or not:” and he proceeds to say, “I dispatch a messenger to the Duke of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which is granted all he desires; and we expect by the return of the messenger the original will from him.” George the First had left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. The Archbishop, on news of the King’s death, carried his copy to the Privy Council, and, without the precaution of opening it before them, which the poor man could not apprehend would be so necessary as it proved, gave it into the new King’s hands, who, to the Prelate’s great surprise, carried it from Council unopened.[116] The letter I have quoted above shows what was the fate of the other copy: the honest Duke of Wolfenbuttle sold it for a subsidy! George the First had been in the right to take those precautions: he himself had burned his wife’s testament,[117] and her father’s, the Duke of Zelle, both of whom had made George the Second their heir—a palliative of the latter’s obliquity, if justice would allow of any violation.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] The same person who, when Governor of Minorca, was forced to surrender it to the Spaniards in 1782.

[111] Jeffery Amherst, afterwards made Knight of the Bath, a Baron of England, and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of Great Britain, from which post he was removed in 1782, was one of those men who, in particular circumstances, in one period of their life have performed not only great actions, but have conducted them with consummate sense and address, and who in the rest of their lives have been able to display no symptoms of genius. Amherst, who terminated the war in America with so much ability, being afterwards raised to the command of the Army at home, was discovered and universally allowed to be a man of incapacity, or neglectful of the most common details of his office. Whether conscious of his own defects, and of being incompetent to converse with men whom he knew enlightened, he seemed determined to bury his deficiency in obstinate silence; or else his pride and vanity, of which he had a tolerable share, made him disdain to communicate his paucity of ideas. No satisfaction could be extorted from him on whatever business he was consulted; nor was it much easier to obtain from him the necessary orders in his department. In 1779, when the French Fleet arrived off Plymouth, he could not have given more absurd directions had he meant to betray the place; and, when every part of the coast was open to expected invasion, he was nowhere prepared with the common necessaries for taking the field. When reproached in Parliament with his negligence and insufficiency, he confirmed them by the sullen and inadequate brevity of his reply. When at last he was removed by the preponderance of the Opposition in 1782, he fell as unregretted as he had remained in place despised.

General Monk had been another of those temporary brilliants. All the depths of refined policy had seemed to have conducted and ensured his success. After the Restoration, not a gleam of genius appeared, though he proved just the reverse of Amherst. Monk had observed the most profound secrecy and dissimulation in conducting the re-establishment of the King. He seems to have thrown off all disguise in the rest of his life; though his activity remained, whenever called out. Amherst assumed reserve when he had nothing to conceal, and laid aside industry when it would have sufficed to communicate vigour to others. When men shine but once, it is probable that fortune has the chief merit in their success; and that others impute to their foresight the lucky combinations of chance in their favour.

In different parts of these Memoirs I am well aware that I have given very different characters of some of the principal actors. The reason is, that, having observed them well for a long series of years, I have seen cause to change my opinions—perhaps the persons themselves altered, for who is consistent? I choose to leave the portraits with their variations; I think they were just at each period in which they were drawn—the reader must judge from the conduct of the persons; for he will observe, that, if I vary my accounts, I produce the instances in which the actors appear different from themselves. Lord Chatham I have described in all the lights in which he appeared—sometimes a capital statesman, and sometimes an empiric. The Duke of Cumberland I have shown to have become a most wise, philosophic, and respectable, from a haughty and insolent Prince. Lord George Sackville I have spoken of with admiration of his parts, with great indecision on his spirit, with scorn of his want of judgment, and of his want of abilities in the latter part of his time. Lord Amherst was allowed for many years to have deserved the encomiums I have given to his conduct in America. The contempt conceived for him afterwards was so general, that, even while he retained his power, he had not an advocate.—A.