" I am no flatterer," says Mrs. Elton in Emma,
and the Messrs. Townsend in the introduction to The Prince of Wales (Marriott, 10s. 6d.) make the same sort of avowal. But their performance belies their profession, and it has resulted in a volume which contains all the faults of such books— indiscriminate laudation, sloppy insincerity, and a portentous snobbishness. It is, indeed, one of the penalties of royalty that it should have to suffer in silence under these reflections. The book is poor stuff throughout. Insincere, in that it states (inter alia) that the Prince at Oxford was treated " just as an ordinary freshman." He was not, and he could not be ; the President of his College, for instance, " received him in the quadrangle." Sloppiness emerges in the state- ments (p. 101) that " he attended lectures freely," and on p. 100, that he did not ; while as to snobbishness let the following two extracts speak : " When he left Oxford, he was representative of the best product that our Universities can develop." (He was at Oxford for a few terms only.) Or again (where the italics are ours) : " How must some fortunate men to-day recollect with a smile the time when they splashed mud (at football) over the good-humoured Heir to the Throne." Can a deeper depth of snobbery be plumbed ? Loyalty is a fine thing ; but it should not try to find vent in fulsome and disproportionate adulation.
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