s in the
study of his literary and moral character will suspect him for one moment
of having pandered to American prejudice by prating to it, as a tit-bit
and _primeur_, scandal about this or that King George. But it was quite
evident from the first, and ought to have been evident to the author long
beforehand, that the enemy _might_ think, and _would_ say so. In fact,
putting considerations of mere expediency aside, I think myself that he
had much better not have done it. As for the justice of the general
verdict, it is no doubt affected throughout by Thackeray's political
incapacity, whatever side he might have taken, and by that quaint
theoretical republicanism, with a good deal of pure Toryism mixed, which
he attributes to some of his characters, and no doubt, in a kind of rather
confused speculative way, held himself. He certainly puts George III's
ability too low, and as certainly he indulges in the case of George IV in
one of these curious outbursts--a _Hetze_ of unreasoning, frantic,
"stop-thief!" and "mad-dog!" persecution--to which he was liable. "Gorgius"
may not have been a hero or a proper moral man: he was certainly "a most
expensive _Herr_", and by no means a pattern husband. But recent and by no
means Pharisaical expositions have exhibited his wife as almost infinitely
_not_ better than she should be; the allegations of treachery to private
friends are, on the whole, Not Proven: if he deserted the Whigs, it was no
more than some of these very Whigs very shortly afterwards did to their
country: he played the difficult part of Regent and the not very easy one
of King by no means ill; he was, by common and even reluctant consent, an
extremely pleasant host and companion; and he liked Jane Austen's novels.
There have been a good many princes--and a good many demagogues too--of whom
as much good could not be said.

Admitting excess in these details, and "inconvenience" in the
circumstances of the original representation, there remains, as it seems
to me, a more than sufficient balance to credit. That social-historic
sense, accompanied with literary power of bodying forth its results, which
we noticed as early as the opening of _Catherine_ has, in the seventeen
years' interval, fully and marvellously matured itself. The picture is not
a mere mob of details: it is an orderly pageant of artistically composed
material. It is possible; it is life-like; the only question (and that is
rather a minor one) is, "Is it t