‘Such a sweet creature is worth a world’: 

and no actor on the stage was more like a king than His Majesty was when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on.  And yet you know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at things.

Bossuet.  Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to conciliate our regard and love.

Fontanges.  Well, I think so too, though I did not like it in him at first.  I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to you with it upon my finger.  But first I must be cautious and particular to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should say.

[Footnote 231:  Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de Fontanges died in child-bed the year following; he survived her twenty-three years.]

[Footnote 232:  Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fenelon, the fairest apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.

While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by Marlborough, who said to the Archbishop that, if he was sorry he had not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the pleasure of visiting so great a man.  Peterborough, the next of our generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.]

GEORGE, LORD BYRON.

(1788-1824.)

LVIII.  THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.

The Vision of Judgment appeared in 1822, and created a great sensation owing to its terrible attack on George III., as well as its ridicule of Southey, of whose long-forgotten Vision of Judgment this is a parody.

  I.

  Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate;
    His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
  So little trouble had been given of late: 
    Not that the place by any means was full,
  But since the Gallic era “eighty-eight”,
    The devils had ta’en a longer, stronger pull,
  And “a pull all together”, as they say
  At sea—­which drew most souls another way.

  II.

  The angels all were singing out of tune,
    And hoarse with having little else to do,
  Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
    Or curb a runaway young star or two,
  Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon
    Broke out of bounds o’er the ethereal blue,
  Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
  As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

  III.

  The guardian seraphs had retired on high,
    Finding their charges past all care below;
  Terrestrial business fill’d nought in the sky
    Save the recording angel’s black bureau;
  Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
    With such rapidity of vice and woe,
  That he had stripp’d off both his wings in quills,
  And yet was in arrear of human ills.