When the King (God bless his Majesty!) shall peruse this book and be well-pleased therewith, if it should enter into his royal mind to call for his Librarian, and ask of him what honour and dignity hath been done to the author of it, for having delighted the heart of the King, and of so many of his liege subjects, and you shall have replied unto his Majesty, “there is nothing done for him;” then Dr. Gooch when the King shall take it into consideration how to testify his satisfaction with the book, and to manifest his bounty toward the author, you are requested to bear in mind my thoughts upon this weighty matter, of which I shall now proceed to put you in possession.
Should he generously think of conferring upon me the honour of knighthood, or a baronetcy, or a peerage, (Lord Doncaster the title,) or a step in the peerage, according to my station in life, of which you Dr. Gooch can give him no information; or should he meditate the institution of an Order of Merit for men of letters, with an intention of nominating me among the original members, worthy as such intentions would be of his royal goodness, I should nevertheless, for reasons which it is not necessary to explain, deem it prudent to decline any of these honours.
Far be it from me, Dr. Gooch, to wish that the royal apparel should be brought which the King useth to wear, and the horse that the King rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; and that this apparel and horse should be delivered to the hand of one of the King's most noble princes, that he might array me withal; and bring me on horseback through the streets of London, and proclaim before me, thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honour! Such an exhibition would neither accord with this age, nor with the manners of this nation, nor with my humility.
As little should I desire that his Majesty should give orders for me to be clothed in purple, to drink in gold and to sleep upon gold, and to ride in a chariot with bridles of gold, and to have an head-tire of fine linen, and a chain about my neck, and to eat next the King, because of my wisdom, and to be called the King's cousin. For purple garments, Dr. Gooch are not among the propria quæ maribus in England at this time; it is better to drink in glass than in gold, and to sleep upon a feather bed than upon a golden one; the only head-tire which I wear is my night-cap, I care not therefore for the fineness of its materials; and I dislike for myself chains of any kind.
That his Majesty should think of sending for me to sit next him because of my wisdom, is what he in his wisdom will not do, and what, if he were to do, would not be agreeable to me, in mine. But should the King desire to have me called his Cousin, accompanying that of course with such an appanage as would be seemly for its support, and should he notify that most gracious intention to you his Librarian, and give order that it should be by you inserted in the Gazette,—to the end that the secret which assuredly no sagacity can divine, and no indiscretion will betray, should incontinently thereupon be communicated through you to the royal ear; and that in future editions of this work, the name of the thus honoured author should appear with the illustrious designation, in golden letters of, “by special command of his Majesty,
COUSIN TO THE KING.”
A gracious mandate of this nature, Dr. Gooch, would require a severe sacrifice from my loyal and dutiful obedience. Not that the respectful deference which is due to the royal and noble house of Gloucester should withhold me from accepting the proffered honour: to that house it could be nothing derogatory; the value of their consanguinity would rather be the more manifest, when the designation alone, unaccompanied with rank, was thus rendered by special command purely and singularly honourable. Still less should I be influenced by any apprehension of being confounded in cousinship with Olive, calling herself Princess of Cumberland. Nevertheless let me say, Dr. Gooch, while I am free to say it,—while I am treating of it paulo-post-futuratively, as of a possible case, not as a question brought before me for my prompt and irrevocable answer,—let me humbly say that I prefer the incognito even to this title. It is not necessary, and would not be proper to enter into my reasons for that preference; suffice it that it is my humour (speaking be it observed respectfully, and using that word in its critical and finer sense), that it is the idiosyncrasy of my disposition, the familiar way in which it pleases me innocently to exercise my privilege of free will. It is not a secret which every body knows, which nobody could help knowing and which was the more notoriously known because of its presumed secresy. Incognito I am and wish to be, and incognoscible it is in my power to remain:
He deserves small trust,
Who is not privy councillor to himself,
but my secret, (being my own) is, like my life (if that were needed) at the King's service, and at his alone;
Τοῖς κυρίοις γὰρ πάντα χρὴ δηλοῦν λόγον.3