of more importance than the diurnal records of the learned Elias Ashmole, who tells on one day, that he scratched his posteriors too closely, and on another, that his maid took physic! but the manhood of Prince George (who afterwards reigned near sixty years) wanted a Pacolet, or some more visible familiar, to make us better acquainted with his virtues:—a consideration which, after the Author had more than once offered the official and private papers connected with the subject to Gentlemen of far superior attainments, but found the proposal declined with more politeness than prudence, rendered it imperative on him to resort to the pen and the imprimatur, before his recollections should be consigned to the sable bier along with himself.
A review of these pages predisposed the writer to concede much in favour of that nobleman, of ill-fated political notoriety, who had the superintendence of this Prince's education in his adolescency; but he is not aware of any conclusive evidence coinciding with the conjecture; and an authority to which he defers,[1] has revived the combination between Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarine, who kept Lewis
- ↑ Sir Nathaniel W. Wraxall's Own Times
acquaintance and liberal knowledge, his Mother represents him as shy, backward, good-natured, cheerful, but with a serious cast of mind; not quick, but to those whom he knew, intelligent.' Had not the native vigour of his intellect shaken off this drag-chain, such an education was adapted to produce at most nothing better than the "leather and prunella" of Lewis XIII.
