ng since gone. You can hardly praise such a
one without flattery. You can hardly censure him without injustice.
We are either ignorant of his personal doings or we know them as
secrets, which have been divulged for the most part either falsely or
treacherously,--often both falsely and treacherously. It is better,
perhaps, that we should not deal with the personalities of princes.

I believe that Thackeray fancied that he had spoken well of George III.,
and am sure that it was his intention to do so. But the impression he
leaves is poor. "He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy
much; farces and pantomimes were his joy;--and especially when clown
swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so
outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, 'My
gracious monarch, do compose yourself.' 'George, be a king!' were the
words which she,"--his mother,--"was ever croaking in the ears of her
son; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to
be." "He did his best; he worked according to his lights; what virtues
he knew he tried to practise; what knowledge he could master he strove
to acquire." If the lectures were to be popular, it was absolutely
necessary that they should be written in this strain. A lecture simply
laudatory on the life of St. Paul would not draw even the bench of
bishops to listen to it; but were a flaw found in the apostle's life,
the whole Church of England would be bound to know all about it. I am
quite sure that Thackeray believed every word that he said in the
lectures, and that he intended to put in the good and the bad, honestly,
as they might come to his hand. We may be quite sure that he did not
intend to flatter the royal family;--equally sure that he would not
calumniate. There were, however, so many difficulties to be encountered
that I cannot but think that the subject was ill-chosen. In making them
so amusing as he did and so little offensive great ingenuity was shown.

I will now go back to the first series, in which the lecturer treated of
Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett,
Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. All these Thackeray has put in their
proper order, placing the men from the date of their birth, except
Prior, who was in truth the eldest of the lot, but whom it was necessary
to depose, in order that the great Swift might stand first on the list,
and Smollett, who was not born till four