He is as good now as my ancestor was two
hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions; he
is an old man with very young pensions: that's all."
Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my
little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and
laborious individuals? I would willingly leave him to the Herald's
College, which the philosophy of the _sans-culottes_ (prouder by far
than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge-Dragons
that ever pranced in a procession of what his friends call aristocrats
and despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians,
recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms differ wholly from that
other description of historians who never assign any act of politicians
to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their
pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for
merit than the preamble of a patent or the inscription on a tomb. With
them every man created a peer is first an hero ready-made. They judge of
every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled; and the
more offices, the more ability. Every general officer with them is a
Marlborough, every statesman a Burleigh, every judge a Murray or a
Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed at or pitied by all their
acquaintance make as good a figure as the best of them in the pages of
Guillim, Edmondson, and Collins.
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