Truly good, and truly great: For glorious as he rose, benignly so he set! To salve from cruelty: Those, for whom love could no excuses frame, His conversation, wit, and parts, His knowledge in the noblest, useful arts, Who, lighting him, did greater lights receive: But when the same writer had the fulsome flattery to affirm, that mankind could no more subsist without the poetry of his patron (lord Middlesex) than the world could subsist without the daily course of divine Providence; his laudatory strains will be entitled to no higher estimation than the false trappings of fictitious fame.'] 7 Had this king but loved business as well as he understood it, said sir Richard Bulstrode, he would have been the greatest prince in Europe. Of his own country he used to say, that it was the most comfortable climate to live under that he had ever experienced; as there were more days in the year, and more hours in the day, that a man could take exercise out of doors in it, than in any country he had ever known. Seward's Anecd. vol. ii. 4th edit. JAMES THE SECOND. THE only genius of the line of STUART, CHARLES the Second, was no author, unless we allow him to have composed the two simple papers found in his strong box after his death: but they are universally supposed to have been given to him as a compendious excuse for his embracing doctrines, which he was too idle to examine, too thoughtless to remember, and too sensible to have believed on reflection. His brother James wrote "Memoirs of his own Life and Campaigns to the Restoration." The original, in English, is preserved in the Scotch College at Paris; but the king himself, in 1696, to oblige the Cardinal de Bouillon, made an extract of it in two books in French, chiefly with a view to what related to Marshal Turenne. This piece is printed at the end of Ramsay's Life of that hero. We have besides, under the name of this prince, the following works: [Mr. Seward mentions many other curious papers deposited in the same place, relating to the transactions of king James the second's reign and the archbishopric of Glasgow, which might have been purchased for 2000l. Biographiana, vol. ii. p. 515.] 3" The Royal Sufferer, King James II. consisting of Meditations, Soliloquies, Vows, &c." one of the latter is, "to rise every. morning at seven." The whole, said to be composed by his majesty at St. Germain's, is written in bad English, and was published at Paris by father Bretonneau, a Jesuit. The frontispiece represents the king sitting in a chair, in a pensive manner, and crowned with thorns". "Memoirs of the English Affairs, chiefly naval, from the Year 1660 to 1673, written by his Royal Highness James Duke of York, under his Administration of Lord High Admiral, &c. Published from his original Letters, and other royal Authorities." Lond. 1729. 8vo. In another edition it is called "Royal Tracts." This is evidently an imitation of his father's works, containing his "speeches, orders, messages, letters, &c. upon extraordinary occasions; both before and since his retiring out of England." The second part is intituled, “Imago Regis; or the sacred Image of his Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, written during his Retirements in France." Paris, 1692, 16o. [This book, while it professes to be "imprinted at Paris for Estiene Lucas, merchant bookseller," has every appearance of proceed-, ing from an English press.] ⚫ [His crown is lying on a table beside him, and a volume spread before him, with a citation from one of David's psalms. The figure of the king much resembles Hogarth's design of the distressed poet. When George prince of Denmark joined king William, James merely said, "What, has the little est il possible left me at last?" But when he heard of the princess Anne's defection, he exclaimed, "Good God! am I then abandoned by my children?" Seward's Anecd. vol. ii. p. 238.] |