Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him for his case in short was this:-he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use, nor capable of being of use to him, nor desirous of being so. Dodington, who governed him at present, was afraid of having him quite reconciled to the King, or quite broke with him, foreseeing that in either of these situations the Prince would inevitably be taken out of his hands. In the one he would be governed by his mother, and consequently by Sir Robert Walpole; in the other by Pulteney, Lord Chesterfield, or Lord Carteret, who, as heads of the party, could never have submitted to act a subordinate part to Mr. Dodington, whom no man but himself would have thought of a rank above them."* Lord Hervey continues his narrative-whether justly or not we cannot judge, only observing that no lover could be expected to speak fairly of his rival. "And when I have mentioned his [the Prince's] temper, it is the single ray of light I can throw on his character to gild the otherwise universal blackness that belongs to it; and it is surprising how any character, made up of so many contradictions, should never have had the good fortune to have stumbled (par contrecoup, at least) upon any one virtue. But as every vice has its opposite vice as well as its opposite virtue, so this heap of iniquity, to complete at once its uniformity in vice in general, as well as its contradictions in particular vices, like variety of poisons, whether hot or cold, sweet or bitter, was still poison, and had never an antidote. The contradictions he was made up of were these:-He was at once both false and sincere; he was false by principle, and sincere from weakness, trying always to disguise the truths he ought not to have concealed, and from his levity discovering those he ought never to have suffered to escape him; so that he never told the truth when he pretended to confide, and was for ever telling the most improper and dishonest truths when anybody else had confided in him. He was at once both lavish and avaricious, and always both in the wrong place, and without the least ray of either of the virtues often concomitant with these vices; for he was profuse without liberality, and avaricious without economy. He was equally addicted to the weakness of making many friends and many enemies, for there was nobody too low or too bad for him to court, nor nobody too great or too good for him to betray. He desired without love, could laugh without being pleased, and weep without being grieved; for which reason his mistresses never were fond of him, his companions never pleased with him, and those he seemed to commiserate never relieved by bim. When he aimed at being merry in company, it was in so tiresome a manner that his mirth was to real cheerfulness what wet wood is to a fire, that damps the flame it is brought to feed. His irresolution would make him take anybody's advice who happened to be with him; so that jealousy of being thought to be influenced (so prevalent in weak people, and consequently those who are most influenced,) always made him say something depreciating to the next comer of him that advised him last. With these qualifications, true to nobody, and seen through by everybody, it is easy to imagine nobody had any regard for him what regard, indeed, was it possible anybody could have for a man who had no truth in his words, no justice in his inclination, no integrity in his commerce, no sincerity in his professions, no stability in his attachments, no sense in his conversation, no dignity in his behaviour, and no judgment in his conduct? Neither the Queen nor Princess Caroline loved the Prince, and yet both of them had by fits a reste of management for his character, which made them, though they were very ready to allow all his bad qualities, mix now and then some good ones, which he had very little pretence to. They used to say that he was not such a "Whenever the Prince was in a room with the King, put one in mind of stories one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company and are invisible to the rest; and in this manner, wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the place the Prince filled an empty space!"-Mem. i. 412. "The King (says Walpole) had refused to pay what debts the Prince had left in Hanover."-Vid. Memoirs of George the Second, i. p. 72, and p. 87, where see what he says on the quarrel. The Queen narrowly pried into his private affairs. Princess Emily betrayed him, and Lord Bolingbroke and his party inflamed the quarrel. Hinc illæ lacrymæ.-REV. fool as one took him for; that he was not wise neither; that he could sometimes be very amusing, though often very ennuyant; and that in everything he was made up of such odd contradictions, that he would do the meanest, the lowest, and the dirtiest things about money, and at other times the most generous; that his heart was like his head, both bad and good, and that he very often seemed to have worse heart than he really had, by being a knave when he only thought he was avoiding the character of being a dupe; and by doing things to people without reflecting enough on what he was doing to know he was hurting them so much as he really did.', Little disposed as was the Queen to receive any favourable impressions of the Prince, certainly Lord Hervey (who had some peculiar cause of enmity not ascertained) was not the person to suggest them. He told the Queen, in one conversation, that— interest, who would want nothing but a fair opportunity to hasten the day of payment; and the King's manner of exposing himself a thousand different ways would make it full as easy for these fellows to accomplish such a design as their conscience would to form it," &c. "There is the danger of the King's days, somehow or other, being shortened by those profligate usurers who lend the Prince money upon these terms. I am sure, if I guess right, there are some who deal with the Prince for money payable at the King's death with most extortionate Sir Robert Walpole's opinion is not more favourable to the Prince's character, unless, indeed, the portrait "What (in case of the King's death) will be the Prince's case?-a poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch, that nobody loves, that nobody believes, that nobody will trust, and that will trust everybody by turns, Lord H. hinted at the influence the has been gone over by another hand. and that everybody by turns will impose upon, betray, mislead, and plunder. And what will then become of this divided family, and this divided country, is too melancholy a prospect for one to admit a conjecture to paint it." Queen might have over him. worse than you or I can foresee. The resentment for the distinction she shews to you too, I believe, would not be for gotten. Then the notion he has of her great riches, and the desire he would feel to be fingering them, would make him punish her, and punish her again, in order to make her buy her ease, till she had not a groat left.'" When the Prince demanded an increased income, family matters became worse, and family hatred more intense. "They neither of them (the Queen or Princess Caroline) made much ceremony of wishing, a hundred times a day, that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy-the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe, and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self-that he loved anything but moneythat he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke-and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab them with the other if he could. ***" Again we read, "The Queen and Princess Caroline both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished on him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death."* On a rumour of the Prince wanting *When the King's youngest daughter Louisa died, he said, "This has been a fatal I lost my eldest son; but I am glad of it," &c. Walpole's Memoirs, vol. REV. year. i. p. 227. to give up the electorate of Hanover for 100,000l. a-year," The mean fool (interrupted the queen)! the poor-spirited beast! I remember you laughed at me when I told you once this avaricious and sordid monster was so little able to resist taking a guinea on any terms, if he saw it before his nose, that if the Pretender offered him 500,000l. for the reversion of this crown, he would say, 'Give me the money!' What do you think now?" &c. The farewell blessing from the queenly mother, which we are permitted to know (for much is suppressed), is as follows, and this we think will be sufficient: :-" My dear lord," replied the queen, " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast, in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it!" This early and extraordinary hatred of both the parents to their son no one can fully explain. It went so far as even to propose to take from him the crown of England and give it to his brother. They kept him abroad as long as they could; and Sir Robert Walpole told George the First "if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his lifetime, he would never set foot on English ground." This shows that the parental enmity was earlier than any conceivable reason can be assigned for it. The tree of evil first struck root in the soil of Hanover, though it spread its fatal branches and luxuriated afterwards on English ground. The curses sent forth by the parents' lips kept returning, as they always do, to fill their unnatural home with additional sorrow and guilt; for the Prince had his revenge in perpetually disturbing his father's government, till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation was uttered, "Fritz is dead!" There was one passage in Lord Hardwicke's papers which led to great expectations of the discovery of the secret, but it has ended in a double disappointment. In his Diary are these remarkable words: "Sir Robert Walpole informed me of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the Queen and Prince, of too high and secret a nature ever to be trusted to this narrative; but from thence I found great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the King and Queen and his Royal Highness turned on some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared." This dark and mysterious passage has not been explained by the fuller publication of Lord Hardwicke's manuscripts. Mr. Croker, the editor of Hervey, thinks it may have related to the proposed separation of England and Hanover. We are more inclined to think it related to some personal and domestic circumstances of a painful nature, begetting what we have seen-hatred, contempt, insult, and alienation. We end with a short extract relating to the King. When Lord Scarborough and Lord Hervey once travelled tête-à-tête from Richmond "Their whole discourse was, how unamiable the King was, and how he contrived (notwithstanding he had some good qualities, which every body must esteem) to make it absolutely impossible for any body to love him: for example, they both agreed that the King certainly had personal courage, that he was secret, and that he would not lie-though I remember, when I once said the last of these things to Sir Robert Walpole, he said, • Not often'-but Lord Hervey and Lord Scar borough both agreed, too, that notwithstanding those good qualities, which were, like most good qualities, very rare, and consequently very respectable, his Majesty's brusqueries to everybody by turns, whoever came near him, his never bestowing anything from favour, and often even disobliging those on whom he conferred benefits, made him so disagreeable to all his servants, that people could not stand the ridicule even of affecting to love him for fear of being thought his dupes; and thus those whose interest it was to hide his faults, and support his character in the world, were often the very persons who hurt it most; as people at a distance who railed at him might be thought to do it from ignorance or pique; whilst all his own servants giving him up in the manner it was the fashion to do, must be concluded by all the world to proceed from their thinking it impossible to conceal it, or from their hating him too much to desire it. What gave rise to this conversation was a thing (in the style of many his Majesty uttered) which he had said that very day, at his dressing, before, at least, half-a-dozen people, upon Lord Hervey's telling his Majesty that he believed he was very glad, after so long a session, to get a little fresh air in the country; to which his Majesty very naturally, but very impoliticly, replied, 'Yes, my lord, I am very glad to be got away, for I have seen of late, in London, so many hungry faces every day, that I was afraid they would have eat me at last.' The number of things of this kind he used to be perpetually saying would fill volumes if I were to recount them all; for between those he affected to advance by way of showing his military bravery, and those which flowed naturally from his way of thinking and absolute incapacity of feeling, nobody could be with him an hour without hearing something of this kind that would give them an ill opinion of him for their lives. I once heard him say he would much sooner forgive anybody that had murdered a man, than anybody that cut down one of his oaks; because an oak was so much longer growing to a useful size than a man, and, consequently, one loss would be sooner supplied than the other and one evening, after a horse had run away, and killed himself against an iron spike, poor Lady Suffolk saying it was very lucky the man who was upon him had received no hurt, his Majesty snapped her very short, and said, 'Yes, I am very lucky, truly: pray where is the luck? I have lost a good horse, and I have got a booby of a groom still to keep,'" &c. : Those who open these remarkable Memoirs will find in them much information on various matters, which we have not been able even to mention. In poetry they will see something in Pope, and something in Lady Mary Wortley, illustrated and explained. In politics much communication, on secret statesmanship, and backstairs influence. They will be admitted even to the King's cabinet and the Queen's dressing-room. Apparet domus intus et atria longa patescunt They will see his Majesty employed in the troublesome task of managing his mistresses, and the queen in the no less arduous one of maintaining her power in Church and State, For hers the gospel is, and hers the law. They will be present at the nuptials of the Princess Royal with her "deformed dwarf and monkey," the Prince of Orange. Then, turning to her sisters, they will see one virtuous princess in love with Lord Hervey, and the other dying for the Duke of Grafton. The histories of Miss Vane and Miss Howe will offer sad examples of the dangers of a court, to youth, beauty, and inexperience. They may be present at the reluctant departure of Lady Suffolk, and the willing arrival of Madam Walmoden. They will dwell in a palace, where Lord Hervey was reckoned the most finished courtier, and afterwards in a church, where Clarke and Hoadley were the most orthodox prelates. Among the gilded and venal crowd that surrounds them, they will observe two persons conspicuous above all others for their talents and their power. One is Lord Bolingbroke, who is ever plotting treason, and the other Sir Robert Walpole, who is ever distributing bribes. They will see treachery and suspicion the sentinels at every door; but at last they will cease to wonder how it is that every honest man and every virtuous woman seem to be removed from a place where the fatal taste of that "sweet nepenthe "* sheds its lulling influence, which, once felt, not the strongest can resist, nor the most cautious elude, and he who drinkswakes no more. • "Lulled with the sweet nepenthe of a court." Pope.-REV. MR. URBAN, Temple, June 10. I AVAIL myself of the opportunity afforded me by a day or two of unexpected leisure to forward you my answer to the Reply * which Sir F. Madden has made to my Remarks on his edition of Layamon. It is opened with the following observations: "Mr. Guest commences by quoting a passage from my Preface, in which I say, "Although many writers of later date, as Tyrwhitt, Ellis, Kitson, Mitford, Campbell, Turner, and Conybeare, have severally commented on, or quoted from, Layamon's poem, yet its peculiar value in a philological point of view appears to have remained but little known up to the time when the Society of Antiquaries determined on its publication." "And I then proceed to state the heads of inquiry to be made, as to the author, and structure of his work. There is nothing here but a simple statement of fact; yet Mr. Guest, in reference to these words, says he shall examine how far the result (qu. results) of Sir F. Madden's labours are entitled to the praise of originality; which he thus claims for them.' Now I claim here no originality, but I do claim the merit of having been the first to point out to the Anglo-Saxon Committee of the Society of Antiquaries the peculiar philological merits of Layamon's poem, which occasioned its publication to be determined on, in May, 1831; a date, it will be admitted, somewhat anterior to Mr. Guest's book, which appeared only in 1838." I give the whole of this passage exactly as Sir F. Madden prints it, that there may be no possibility of mistake as to his meaning. Sir F. Madden exhibits much excited feeling at being charged by me with unfairness of quotation and general misrepresentation of my opinions. Yet, at the very commencement of his Reply, he cites a part of one of my quotations, and then "in reference to these words," taunts me with drawing an unfounded inference, while he has omitted the very sentence on which my inference was grounded. I hardly know what to say in a case like this. I will not use that "severity of language" which the occasion seems to call for; but I ask Sir F. Madden-it is in sorrow rather than in anger or in triumph-what good can he propose to himself by misquotations such as these? The merely Gent. Mag. June, 1848, p. 600, temporary advantages which result from them are surely more than counterbalanced by the discredit which must inevitably overtake the writer on their exposure. The extract which Sir F. Madden has given from my quotation would, if he had given the whole of such quotation, have been followed by the words, "Having premised thus much, it is requisite to turn to the work itself, and inquire, as far as we are able, 1, who was the author; 2, from what sources his work was compiled; 3, the period of its composition; and, lastly, the style and metrical structure of the poem, as well as the dialect in which it was written, and grammatical forms."-Pref. viii. Here we have the verb in the present tense, "it is requisite to turn," &c.; and, though the whole statement be ambiguous, surely the general reader must draw the conclusion that Sir F. Madden was driven by the ignorance of all preceding writers to itself;" and that whatever was added make original researches in "the work to the meagre accounts which had been left us by the seven authors whose names he has given he claimed as his own. With my knowledge of the facts, I could not be ignorant that the whole of his argument was confused and illogical; but want of logic is not unfrequent with Sir F. Madden, and it was more charitable to impute it on the present occasion, than to suppose there was design mixed up with so much confusion, and that he was carefully preparing an escape for himself, while he was throwing dust in the eyes of his reader. He has now put his own construction on the passage, and I can no longer take refuge in such welcome incredulity. Sir F. Madden does not correctly give the purport of my paper when he |