re malevolent turn of mind would very likely have acted as public
expectation seemed to foreshadow, but William, as we have seen, soon
made it clear that he had no fault to find with the Duke of Wellington,
that he cherished no ill-will and was quite ready to let bygones be
bygones. There can be no doubt that William, although he had no great
defects of any deep or serious nature, no defects at least which are
not common enough among the sovereigns of his time, was yet as
undignified a figure for a throne as even the modern comic opera itself
could imagine.

He was eccentric to a degree that sometimes seemed to suggest a lurking
tendency to insanity. He was fussy, garrulous, excitable, noisy,
overbearing, apt to take strong likes and dislikes and to express his
likings and his dislikings with an utter disregard for the accepted
conventionalities of social life.

He could explode at a moment's notice into a burst of rage which
sometimes made itself felt for hours, and perhaps when the next day
came he had forgotten all about it and greeted those who were its
especial objects with hilarious good-humor. There were many anecdotes
told about him in the days not long before his accession to the throne
which were commonly believed by those who knew him, {116} and which it
would not be possible to reproduce in the modest pages suitable to our
own times.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Some strange doings of the King]

Now it would certainly be most unfair to accept every story told by
gossip about some exalted personage as a story worthy of credit and
qualified to take its place in authentic history, but, at the same
time, it is quite fair and reasonable when forming an estimate of the
exalted personage's character to take some account of the sayings of
contemporary gossip. We may be sure that there were stories told about
the father of Frederick the Great, about Catherine of Russia, about a
late King of Bavaria, which were not true, but none the less the
historian is undoubtedly helped to form an estimate of the ways and
doings of these exalted personages by the collective testimony of the
stories that are told about them and believed in their own time.
William the Fourth could not, when he ascended the throne, suddenly
shake off all the rough manners and odd ways which he had allowed
himself to foster during his long career as a Prince of the Blood
Royal, as a sailor, and as a man much given to the full indulgence of
his humors