his pleasure or his convenience may prompt him to attempt it. And it is because he cannot resume them again in good earnest, that he endeavours to make up for his want of sincerity by violence, either by canting till he makes your soul sicken, like the author of The Friend, or by raving like a Bedlamite, as does the Editor of The Times. Why does he abuse Bonaparte and call him an upstart? Because he is himself, if he is any thing at all, an upstart; and because Bonaparte having got the start of him one way, he turned back to gain the race another, by trying for a court-livery, and to recommend himself to the house of Brunswick, by proclaiming the principles of the house of Stuart. Why does he make such a route about Kings and Queens, and Dukes and Duchesses, and old women of all ages and both sexes? Because he cares no more for them in his heart than we do. How should he? "What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?" What motive has he, or what ground of passion, that he should
"Cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
"And, like a whore, unpack his heart with words!"
None in the world, any more than the poor player in Hamlet, who tried to "work his soul to his conceit, tears in his eyes, distraction in his looks," because it was his cue to do so. He blusters and hectors, and makes a noise to hide his want of consistency, as cowards turn bullies to hide their want of courage. He is virulent and vulgar in proportion as he is insincere; and yet it is the only way in which he can seem himself not to be a hypocrite. He has no blind prejudices to repose on; no unshaken principles to refer to; no hearty attachment to altars or to thrones. You see the Jacobinical leaven working in every line that he writes, and making strange havoc with his present professions. He would cashier Louis and Ferdinand, Alexander and Frederick, to-morrow, and hurl them headlong from their thrones with a stroke of his pen, for not complying with any one of his favourite dogmas. He has no regard for any thing but his own will; no feeling of any thing but of hatred to the cause he has
