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and shocked to see him, when the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first green peas of the year were put on the table, devour the whole dish without offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they pronounced that this great soldier and politician was no better than a Low Dutch bear.1

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. His accent was foreign: his diction was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than was necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficulty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his consciousness that his pronunciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity and the short answers which gave so much offence. Our literature he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre. The poets who wrote Pindaric verses in his praise complained that their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension. Those who

not always a polite husband. But no credit is due to the story contained in the letter which Dalrymple was foolish enough to publish as Nottingham's in 1773, and wise enough to omit in the edition of 1790. How any person who knew any thing of the history of those times could be so strangely deceived, it is not easy to understand, particularly as the handwriting bears no resemblance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is evidently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the King and Queen except at some public place, and whose anecdotes of their private life rested on no better authority than coffeehouse gossip.

1 Ronquillo; Burnet, ii. 2.; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. In a pastoral dialogue between Philander and Palæmon, published in 1691, the dislike with which women of fashion regarded William is mentioned. Philander says:

"But man methinks his reason should recall,
Nor let frail woman work his second fall."

2 Tutchin's Observator of November 16. 1706.

8 Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and who was very grateful for it, informs us that the King did not understand poetica.

are acquainted with the panegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion that he did not lose much by his ignorance.

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was wanting, and that she was excellently Popularity qualified to be the head of the Court. She of Mary. was English by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable and graceful. Her understanding, though very imperfectly cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit and shrewdness in her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something towards bringing books into fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life and the strict attention which she paid to her religious duties were the more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound silence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter it again, made your story go back down your throat.1 Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about eulogy. The passage is in a highly curious manuscript, the property of Lord Lansdowne.

1 Mémoires originaux sur le règne et la cour de Frédéric I., Roi de Prusse, écrits par Christophe Comte de Dohna. Berlin, 1833. It is strange that this interesting volume should be almost unknown in England. The only copy that I have ever seen of it was kindly given to me by Sir Robert Adair. "Le Roi," Dohna says, "avoit une autre qualité très estimable, qui est celle de n'aimer point qu'on rendît de mauvais offices à personne

elopements, duels, and playdebts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking. Her charities were munificent and judicious; and, though she made no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she retrenched from her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France and Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London. So amiable was her conduct, that she was generally spoken of with esteem and tenderness by the most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner in which she had been raised to the throne, and even of those who refused to acknowledge her as Queen. In the Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed any thing that our age has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeed she sometimes expressed her surprise at finding that libellers who respected nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew where her weakness lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had mercifully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength; and the best return which she could make to Him was to discountenance all malicious reflections on the characters of others. Assured that she possessed her husband's entire confidence and affection, she turned the

par des railleries." The Marquis de La Forêt tried to entertain His Majesty at the expense of an English nobleman." Ce prince," says Dohna, "prit son air sévère, et, le regardant sans mot dire, lui fit rentrer les paroles dans le ventre. Le Marquis m'en fit ses plaintes quelques heures après. 'J'ai mal pris ma bisque,' dit-il; 'j'ai cru faire l'agréable sur le chapitre de Milord. . . . mais j'ai trouvé à qui parler, et j'ai attrapé un regard du roi qui m'a fait passer l'envie de rire.'" Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitive about the character of a Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, says he, “j'eus à peu près le même sort que M. de la Forêt."

edge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and employed all the influence which she derived from her many pleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the people for him.1

The Court removed from White

Hampton

Court.

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of London, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done much to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for him to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled to with the fog of the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace, with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with the fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate in the streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and his sense of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapid progress. His physicians pronounced it impossible that he could live to the end of the year. His face was so

1 Compare the account of Mary by the Whig Burnet with the mention of her by the Tory Evelyn in his Diary, March 8. 1694, and with what is said of her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter to Archbishop Tennison on her death in 1695. The impression which the bluntness and reserve of William and the grace and gentleness of Mary had made on the populace may be traced in the remains of the street poetry of that time. The following conjugal dialogue may still be seen on the original broadside.

"Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Queen,

My gracious King William, where are you going?'
He answered her quickly. 'I count him no man
That telleth his secret unto a woman.'
The Queen with a modest behaviour replied,
'I wish that kind Providence may be thy guide,
To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Lord,
The which will the greatest of comfort afford.""

These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Richard Heber, and now the property of Mr. Broderip, by whom it was kindly lent to me. In one of the most savage Jacobite pasquinades of 1689, William is described as

"A churle to his wife, which she makes but a jest."

ghastly that he could hardly be recognised. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to hear him gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks. His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His judgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had been distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man that he had been at the Hague.2 It was absolutely necessary that he should quit London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purer air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was a fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under the first Tudors; but the apartments were not, according to the notions of the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Our princes therefore had, since the Restoration, repaired thither seldom; and only when they wished to live for a time in retirement. As William purposed to make the deserted edifice his chief palace, it was necessary for him to build and to plant; nor was the necessity disagreeable to him. For he had, like most of his countrymen, a pleasure in decorating a country house; and next to hunting, though at a great interval, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had already created on a sandy

1 Burnet, ii. 2.; Burnet, MS. Harl. 6584. But Ronquillo's account is much more circumstantial. "Nada se ha visto mas desfigurado; y, quantas veces he estado con el, le he visto toser tanto que se le saltaban las lagrimas, y se ponia moxado y arrancando; y confiesan los medicos que es una asma incurable," Mar. 8. 1689. Avaux wrote to the same effect from Ireland. "La santé de l'usurpateur est fort mauvaise. L'on ne croit pas qu'il vive

un an.

April

2 "Hasta decir los mismos Hollandeses que lo desconozcan," says Ronquillo. "Il est absolument mal propre pour le rôle qu'il a à jouer à l'heure qu'il est," says Avaux. "Slothful and sickly," says Evelyn. March 29.

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