[45]. ‘In fact, the argument drawn from the supposed incapacity of the people against a representative Government, comes with the worst grace in the world from the patrons and admirers of hereditary government. Surely, if government were a thing requiring the utmost stretch of genius, wisdom, and virtue to carry it on, the office of King would never even have been dreamt of as hereditary, any more than that of poet, painter, or philosopher. It is easy here ‘for the Son to tread in the Sire’s steady steps.’ It requires nothing but the will to do it. Extraordinary talents are not once looked for. Nay, a person, who would never have risen by natural abilities to the situation of churchwarden or parish beadle, succeeds by unquestionable right to the possession of a throne, and wields the energies of an empire, or decides the fate of the world with the smallest possible share of human understanding. The line of distinction which separates the regal purple from the slabbering-bib is sometimes fine indeed; as we see in the case of the two Ferdinands. Any one above the rank of an ideot is supposed capable of exercising the highest functions of royal state. Yet these are the persons who talk of the people as a swinish multitude, and taunt them with their want of refinement and philosophy.’—Yellow Dwarf, p. 84.
[46]. A lady of quality abroad, in allusion to the gallantries of the reigning Prince, being told, ‘I suppose it will be your turn next?’ said, ‘No, I hope not; for you know it is impossible to refuse!’ What a satire on the court and fashionables! If this be true, female virtue in the blaze of royalty is no more than the moth in the candle, or ice in the sun’s ray. What will the great themselves say to it, in whom at this rate,
——‘the same luck holds,
They all are subjects, courtiers, and cuckolds!’
Out upon it! We’ll not believe it. Alas! poor virtue, what is to become of the very idea of it, if we are to be told that every man within the precincts of a palace is an hypothetical cuckold, or holds his wife’s virtue in trust for the Prince? We entertain no doubt that many ladies of quality have resisted the importunities of a throne, and that many more would do so in private life, if they had the desired opportunity: nay, we have been assured by several that a king would no more be able to prevail with them than any other man! If however there is any foundation for the above insinuation, it throws no small light on the Spirit of Monarchy, which by the supposition implies in it the virtual surrender of the whole sex at discretion; and at the same time accounts perhaps for the indifference shown by some monarchs in availing themselves of so mechanical a privilege.
[47]. Some persons have asserted that the Scotch have no humour. It is in vain to set up this plea, since Smollett was a Scotchman.
[48]. This may be in part the reason of the blunder they have made in laying so much stress on what they call the Cockney School in Poetry—as if the people in London were proud of that distinction, and really thought it a particular honour to get their living in the metropolis, as the Scottish ‘Kernes and Gallowglasses’ think it a wonderful step in their progress through life to be able to hire a lodging and pay scot and lot in the good town of Edinburgh.
[49]. It was not always so. But by knocking on the head the Jacobite loyalty of the Scotch, their political integrity of principle has been destroyed and dissipated to all the winds of Heaven.
[50]. My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.
[51]. He complained in particular of the presumption of attempting to establish the future immortality of man ‘without’ (as he said) ‘knowing what Death was or what Life was’—and the tone in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.