Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall 500 505 When Rome, to prop her sinking empire, bore Their choicest levies to a foreign shore, What if we seized, like a destroying flood, Their widow'd plains, and fill'd the realm with blood, Gave an unbounded loose to manly rage, And, scorning mercy, spared nor sex, nor age? When, for our interest too mighty grown, Monarchs of warlike bent possess'd the throne, What if we strove divisions to foment, And spread the flames of civil discontent, Assisted those who 'gainst their king made head, And gave the traitors refuge when they fled? 510 When restless Glory bade her sons advance, And pitch'd her standard in the fields of France, What if, disdaining oaths, an empty sound, By which our nation never shall be bound, 512 Before the union of the two crowns, Scotland was always in strict alliance with France; in consequence of which, when Edward III. claimed the Gallic throne, and crossed the seas in person to assert his right, the French king prevailed upon David Bruce, king of Scotland to make a general irruption into England. David accordingly entered Northumberland with 50,000 men, and was met at Neville's cross by Edward's heroic queen, Philippa, at the head of no more than twelve thousand; notwithstanding this fearful inferiority of numbers, the English obtained a decisive victory, about twenty thousand of the Scotch were killed or taken prisoners, and David was led captive to the tower of London, where he was some years after joined in a similar fate by John king of France, who was taken prisoner by the Black Prince, in the glorious battle of Poictiers. The Scotch, though seldom successful in their pitched bat 515 Bravely we taught unmuzzled war to roam, Through the weak land, and brought cheap laurels home? When the bold traitors leagued for the defence Of law, religion, liberty, and sense, 520 When they against their lawful monarch rose, Awake the very stones to bar our way, 525 There shall be nothing, nor one trace remain [move, tles with the English, did much mischief by their predatory incursions. "For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs; To spoil and havoc more than she can eat." SHAKSPEARE, Hen. V. 523 The dangerous rebellions of 1715 and 1745, bear witness to the devotion of the Scottish nation to the name and cause of the Stuarts. This attachment subsided soon after the latter contest; and the extinction of the elder royal line by the death, at Rome, in 1807, of Henry, Cardinal of York, at the age of eighty-two, and who had latterly subsisted on the bounty of George the Third, has centred all rights to the British throne in the house of Guelph. First they shall dupes, next saints, last martyrs, prove. Already is this game of fate begun Is destined to redeem our race from shame: 530 535 Shall make the rough way smooth, the crooked straight; Shall for our ease the raging floods restrain, 540 530 Dr. Duke with equal injustice and illiberality stigmatized our northern brethren in the following lines: The Scots, a fatal race, Whom God in wrath contrived to place, To scourge our crimes, and check our pride, And more to curse us, mark'd for friends. 540 Mr. Pitt, and his noble brother-in-law, Earl Temple, made every exertion to abolish party, and to form a union of the real and best friends of their country, but were thwarted in their plans, and checked in a brilliant career of glory, by the growing influence of Lord Bute's party, who arrogated to themselves the exclusive title of "the king's friends," and who systematically, and too successfully infused a spirit of disunion in the ranks of their opponents. Where, that she never might be heard of more, 544 550 Lured by that name, fine engine of deceit! Shall the weak English help themselves to cheat; To gain our love, with honours shall they grace The old adherents of the Stuart race, Who pointed out, no matter by what name, Tories or Jacobites, are still the same; To sooth our rage the temporising brood Shall break the ties of truth and gratitude, Against their saviour venom'd falsehoods frame, And brand with calumny our William's name: To win our grace, (rare argument of wit!) To our untainted faith shall they commit (Our faith which, in extremest perils tried, Disdain'd, and still disdains to change her side) 554 559 546 The splendid victories obtained under Mr. Pitt's ad ministration had, like those of the Duke of Marlborough, infused a warlike spirit into the nation, which indisposed it towards the greatest of all blessings. The peace of 1763 was compared to that of Utrecht, and became the constant subject of intemperate abuse with the leaders of opposition; on the discussion of the preliminary articles, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Bute entered into a spirited vindication of them, and concluded his speech with declaring, "That he wished no other epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, than, that he was the adviser of that peace, on the merits of which their lordships were then called upon to decide." 556 The character of King William III. was the test of the party writers of the day, and he was by turns a demon or a demi-god, as the pen was wielded by a Smollett or a Macaulay. That sacred Majesty they all approve, 562 George the Third's avowed partiality for Lord Bute, and our author's frequent allusions to it, induce us to extract the following character of him from The Contrast, a once popular pamphlet; which is drawn with temper, and forms a mean between the eloquent but malignant portrait of him introduced in the first volume of the Anecdotes of Lord Chatham, and the fulsome panegyrics of the ministerial hirelings of the day. "If disinterestedness herself was to draw the negative qualities of the first officer of state in this kingdom, it would be much such a character as had now assumed the reins of government. He was a man that at no time of life had opportunity or inclination for applying to business. When young, he was disposed to gayety; and though having been, at the close of a session, elected one of the sixteen peers, yet by his opposing, right or wrong, all measures of government, he was at the next election excluded, and then in disgust retired to an isle in the kingdom of Scotland, where he spent many years in close monasterial retirement. This being the prime of his life, in which most men, after the school of books, enlarge their ideas in the only useful school, the conversation of men, he formed his from theory; became reserved, full of strange prejudices, and unfit for any thing but the tyrannic dominion of an Highland clan. "When he returned, as if fate was still making him her sport, one time exalting him, the more completely to depress him at another, he was taken notice of on an occasion, that no one could have conceived introductory to the premiership. The Duchess, of Queensbury having entertained her friends with the play of the Fair Penitent, the part of Lothario fell to the lot of his lordship, in which he succeeded so much better than in his late performance in the character of a statesman, that he was greatly admired, and particularly by Frederick, Prince of Wales, * who took great notice of this occasional *The prince emphatically exclaimed, "Here Lord Bute does not act." Mr. Wilkes, in the dedication to the Fall of |