For why should historians have
omitted to embellish their accounts with such a striking circumstance?
or, if the histories of that age are lost, by length of time, why was
not so uncommon an excellence transmitted to posterity, in the more
lasting colours of poetry? Was that unhappy age without a laureate? Was
there then no Young [19] or Philips [20], no Ward [21] or Mitchell [22],
to snatch such wonders from oblivion, and immortalize a prince of such
capacities? If this was really the case, let us congratulate ourselves
upon being reserved for better days; days so fruitful of happy writers,
that no princely virtue can shine in vain. Our monarchs are surrounded
with refined spirits, so penetrating, that they frequently discover, in
their masters, great qualities, invisible to vulgar eyes, and which, did
not they publish them to mankind, would be unobserved for ever.
Nor is it easy to find, in the lives of our monarchs, many instances of
that regard for posterity, which seems to have been the prevailing
temper of this venerable man. I have seldom, in any of the gracious
speeches delivered from the throne, and received, with the highest
gratitude and satisfaction, by both houses of parliament, discovered any
other concern than for the current year, for which supplies are
generally demanded in very pressing terms, and, sometimes, such as imply
no remarkable solicitude for posterity.
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