I have spoken so much of his Royal Highness’s character in the beginning and in various parts of these Memoirs,[177] that little addition is necessary. His haughtiness and severity had made him most obnoxious in the early parts of his life. His profound understanding had taught him to profit of his mortifications; and though he never condescended to make himself amiable but to very few, he became as much respected, though deprived of power, as if his heroism had been victorious. Whether his good sense would have resisted prosperity with equal temper, I much doubt. He would have made a great King, but probably too great a King for so corrupt a Country. His indifference to death, which he had so long and so frequently had in prospect in the last years of his life, and which he seemed to invite, was, I believe, less owing to the solidity of his courage, which was intrepid, than to the unhappiness of his situation. His bodily infirmities,[178] though borne without complaint or impatience, were grievous. His mind had been more sensibly afflicted. Born with a martial spirit and fond of command, he had not only been unsuccessful in every battle, except that of Culloden; but had been forced by cruel circumstances from the favourite profession of his soul; in civil life he was kept, by the temper of his father and the aversion of the Princess Dowager, in a state of neglect and disgrace. Fox, who he had a right to expect should stickle for his power, had betrayed and abandoned him; Pitt had made it a point to bar him from all influence; and the two Pelhams, after leaning on him for a while, had sacrificed him to the Princess and to their own ambition or jealousy of credit. His mind had not been formed for idleness, and could ill digest an exclusion from all military and all civil councils; and was too lofty and too unpliant to feed on trifling amusements. It had the great, but none of the little, powers of philosophy; could bear misfortune, but could not compensate to itself for the want of its object. He used books rather than liked or valued them, and cared for none of the arts. His principles restrained him from going any considerable lengths against the Crown; nor could he stoop to bestow those caresses that are necessary to form extensive connections. He dealt his smiles to those who followed him, like a King that rewards, not like the head of a party, who has farther to go. The dignity of his conduct and behaviour gave his Court the air of a dethroned monarch’s, but had nothing of a Prince whom his nephew’s Court had suspected of having views on the Crown. The King, at his Royal Highness’s request, had promised the first vacant garter to the Earl of Albemarle,[179] and now with great propriety bestowed on him that of his master. The Ministers, too, were assured by his Majesty that the Duke’s death should make no alteration in the present system.