the student of royalty in modern times there is something rather
suggestive in this incident. I like to think of the drug-scented room
at Windsor and of the King, livid and immobile among his pillows,
waiting, in superstitious awe, for the near moment when he must stand,
a spirit, in the presence of a perpetual King. I like to think of him
following the futile prayer with eyes and lips, and then, custom
resurgent in him and a touch of pride that, so long as the blood moved
ever so little in his veins, he was still a king, expressing a desire
that the dutiful feeling and admirable taste of the Prelate should
receive a suitable acknowledgment. It would have been impossible for a
real monarch like George, even after the gout had turned his thoughts
heavenward, really to abase himself before his Maker. But he could, so
to say, treat with Him, as he might have treated with a fellow-
sovereign, in a formal way, long after diplomacy was quite useless.
How strange it must be to be a king! How delicate and difficult a task
it is to judge him! So far as I know, no attempt has been made to
judge King George the Fourth fairly. The hundred and one eulogies and
lampoons, irresponsibly published during and immediately after his
reign, are not worth a wooden hoop in Hades. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has
published a history of George's reign, in which he has so artistically
subordinated his own personality to his subject, that I can scarcely
find, from beginning to end of the two bulky volumes, a single opinion
expressed, a single idea, a single deduction from the admirably-
ordered facts. All that most of us know of George is from Thackeray's
brilliant denunciation. Now, I yield to few in my admiration of
Thackeray's powers. He had a charming style. We never find him
searching for the mot juste as for a needle in a bottle of hay. Could
he have looked through a certain window by the river at Croisset or in
the quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have laughed! He blew on his
pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty