John Wilson Croker[41] will be best known to our readers as the editor of that edition of Boswell’s “Johnson,” to which I have alluded. Within the last ten years, however, his memoirs and correspondence, in two bulky volumes, have excited a certain languid interest, and given entertainment to those who are curious in respect to the political wire-pullings of the early part of this century in London. He was an ardent co-worker with Gifford in the early history of the _Quarterly Review_. He loved a lord every whit as well as Gifford, and by dint of a gentlemanly manner and gentlemanly associations was not limited to the “back-stairs way” of Mr. Gifford in courting those in authority. His correspondence with dukes and earls--to all of whom he is a “dear Croker”--abound; and his account of interviews with the Prince Regent, and of dinners at the Pavilion in Brighton, are quite Boswellian in their particularity and in their atmosphere of worship. There is also long account in the book to which I have called attention, of a private discourse by George IV., of which Mr. Croker was sole auditor; and it is hard to determine whether Croker is more elated by having the discourse to record, or Mr. Jennings by having such a record to edit. _A Prince Regent._ This royal mention brings us once more, for a little space, to our background of kings. Of the old monarch, George III., we have had frequent and full glimpses. We wish to know something now of that new prince (whom we saw in our Scott chapter), but who in 1810, when his father’s faculties failed altogether, became Regent; and we wish to learn what qualities are in him and under what training they developed. The old father had a substructure of good, hard sense that showed itself through all his obstinacies; for instance, when Dr. Markham, who was appointed tutor to his two oldest sons--Prince of Wales and Duke of York--asked how he should treat them, the old king said: “Treat them? Why, to be sure, as you would any gentleman’s sons! If they need the birch, give them the birch, as you would have done at Westminster.” But when they had advanced a bit, and a certain Dr. Arnold (a later tutor) undertook the same regimen, the two princes put their forces together and gave the doctor such a drubbing that he never tried birch again. But it was always a very close life the princes led in their young days; the old king was very rigorous in respect of hours and being out at night. By reason of which George IV. looked sharply after his opportunities, when they did come, and made up for that early cloisterhood by a large laxity of regimen.[42] Indeed, he opened upon a very glittering career of dissipations--the old father groaning and grumbling and squabbling against it vainly.