BLANCO WHITE'S SONNET.

113

out of a kindly, though not conscious, spirit of exaggeration. The sonnet, nevertheless, is truly beautiful.

As I do not like to have such things referred to without being shown them, in case I have not seen them before, I shall do as I would be done by, and lay it before the reader :

"Mysterious night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,—
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
And, lo! creation widened in Man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ?"

VOL. II.

I

CHAPTER XIII.

THE REGENT AND THE EXAMINER.

"The Prince on St. Patrick's Day."-Indictment for an attack on the Regent in that article.-Present feelings of the writer on the subject.-Real sting of the offence in the article.-Sentence of the proprietors of the Examiner to an imprisonment for two years. Their rejection of two proposals of compromise.—Lord Ellenborough, Mr. Garrow, and Mr. Justice Grose.

EVERYTHING having been thus prepared by myself, as well as by others, for a good blow at the Examiner, the ministers did not fail to strike it.

There was an annual dinner of the Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, at which the Prince of Wales's name used to be the reigning and rapturous toast, as that of the greatest friend they possessed in the United Kingdom. He was held to be the jovial advocate of liberality in all things, and sponsor in particular for concession to the Catholic claims. But the Prince of Wales, now become Prince Regent, had retained

PRESENT FEELINGS TOWARDS GEORGE IV. 115

the Tory ministers of his father; he had broken life-long engagements; had violated his promises, particular as well as general, those to the Catholics among them; and led in toto a different political life from what had been expected. The name, therefore, which used to be hailed with rapture, was now, at the dinner in question, received with hisses.

An article appeared on the subject in the Examiner ; the attorney-general's eye was swiftly upon the article; and the result to the proprietors was two years' imprisonment, with a fine, to each, of five hundred pounds. I shall relate the story of my imprisonment a few pages onward. Much as it injured me, I cannot wish that I had evaded it, for I believe that it did good, and I should have suffered far worse in the self-abasement. Neither have I

any quarrel, at this distance of time, with the Prince Regent; for though his frivolity, his tergiversation, and his treatment of his wife, will not allow me to respect his memory, I am bound to pardon it as I do my own faults, in consideration of the circumstances which mould the character of every human being. Could I meet him in some odd corner of the Elysian fields, where charity had room for both of us, I should first apologize to him for having been the instrument in the hand of events for attacking a fellow-creature, and then expect to hear him avow

as hearty a regret for having injured myself, and unjustly treated his wife.

Having made these acknowledgments, I here repeat the article in which the libel appeared, in order that people may see how far it was excusable or otherwise under the circumstances, and whether the acknowledgments are sufficing. I would rather, for obvious reasons, both personal to myself and otherwise, have repeated nothing whatsoever against any individual of her Majesty's kindred, however differently constituted from herself, or however strong and obvious the line which everybody can draw between portions of the same family at different periods of time, and under different circumstances of breeding and connection.

A man may have had

a quarrel with Charles the Second (many a man did have one), without bringing into question his loyalty to Queen Mary or Queen Anne. Nay, his loyalty may have been the greater, and was; nor (as I have said elsewhere) could I have felt so much respect, and done my best to show it, for the good qualities of Queen Victoria, had I not been impressed in a different manner by the faults of her kinsmen. But having committed myself to the task of recording these events in the history of the Examiner, I could not but render the narrative complete.

THE EXAMINER'S ATTACK ON THE REGENT. 117

THE PRINCE ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY.

(Examiner, No. 221; Sunday, Mar. 22, 1812.)

The Prince Regent is still in everybody's mouth; and, unless he is as insensible to biting as to bantering, a delicious time he has of it in that remorseless ubiquity! If a person takes in a newspaper, the first thing he does, when he looks at it, is to give the old groan and say, 'Well! what of the Prince Regent now!' If he goes out after breakfast, the first friend he meets is sure to begin talking about the Prince Regent; and the two always separate with a shrug. He who is lounging along the street will take your arm, and turn back with you to expatiate on the Prince Regent; and he in a hurry, who is skimming the other side of the way, halloes out as he goes, 'Fine things these, of the Prince Regent!' You can scarcely pass by two people talking together, but you shall hear the words 'Prince Regent ;'-' if the Prince Regent has done that, he must be- or such as the Prince Regent and Lord Yar—' the rest escapes in the distance. At dinner the Prince Regent quite eclipses the goose or the calf's-head; the tea-table, of course, rings of the Prince Regent; if the company go to the theatre to see The Hypocrite, or the new farce of Turn Out, they cannot help thinking of the Prince Regent; and, as Dean Swift extracted philosophical meditation from a broomstick, so it would not be surprising if any serious person, in going to bed, should find in his very nightcap something to remind him of the merits of the Prince Regent. In short, there is no other subject but one that can at all pretend to a place in the attention of our countrymen, and that is their old topic, the weather; their whole sympathies are at present divided between the Prince Regent and the barometer.