| Citation |
EG.773.033
18-25 May 1773:1691 (5/252)
From the London Magazine. A Comparison of a Living King
with a Dead One.
Much has been said about his M----y's generous encouragement
of literature; his taste has been extolled, and servile
courtiers have cried him up as a very Macaenas. That his
books may be well bound, properly arranged, and in excellent
condition, is readily granted; but we must have something
like proofs, before we can, with propriety, rank him amongst
the number of those Princes who have fostered genius and
raised the drooping head of science. It is not to
countenance a pantaloon fidler; it is not to pension
renegade Italians for thrumming upon a harpsichord; it is
not to keep a table for he-warblers, cut out for singing; it
is not these things that constitute a patron of arts and
sciences; it is something more worthy, more becoming a King.
Louis the XIVth, though himself no scholar, was a lover of
learned men: His ministers were chosen on account of their
abilities, and his court filled with such men as could
transmit his actions unsullied to posterity.
. . . Now a Bacon, a Locke, a Bolingbroke, or a Swift, would
repine in obscurity; whilst a maker of a pap-spoon; a pair
of nut-crackers, or the contriver of a watch to go without
winding up, would be stared at as a phenomenon, loaded with
presents, and handled by the maids of honor as a being
dropped from the satellites of Jupiter.
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