Mason would have produced a better inscription upon this subject, in the same strain; Southey in a different one, Crabbe would have treated it with more strength, Bowles with a finer feeling, so would his kinswoman and namesake Caroline, than whom no author or authoress has ever written more touchingly, either in prose or verse. Wordsworth would have made a picture from it worthy of a place in the great Gallery of his Recluse. But Whitehead's is a remarkable poem, considering that it was produced during what has been not unjustly called the neap tide of English poetry: and the reader who should be less pleased with it than offended by its faults, may have cause to suspect that his refinement has injured his feelings in a greater degree than it has improved his taste. CHAPTER CCXXXIII. THE PETTY GERMAN PRINCES EXCELLENT PATRONS OF LITERATURE AND LEARNED MEN.—THE DUKE OF SAXE WEIMAR.—QUOTATION FROM BP. HACKET.—AN OPINION OF THE EXCELLENT MR. BOYLE.—A TENET OF THE DEAN OF CHALON, PIERRE DE ST. JULIEN,—AND A VERITABLE PLANTAGENET. _Ita nati estis, ut bona malaque vestra ad Rempublicam pertineant._ TACITUS. “We have long been accustomed to laugh at the pride and poverty of petty German Princes,” says one of the most sensible and right minded travellers that ever published the result of his observations in Germany;[1] “but nothing,” he proceeds, “can give a higher idea of the respectability which so small a people may assume, and the quantity of happiness which one of these insignificant monarchs may diffuse around him, than the example of the little state of Weimar, with a Prince like the present[2] Grand Duke at its head. The mere pride of sovereignty frequently most prominent where there is only the title to justify it, is unknown to him; he is the most affable man in his dominions, not simply with the condescension which any prince can learn to practise as a useful quality, but from goodness of heart.” The whole population of his state little if at all exceeds that of Leicestershire; his capital is smaller than a third or fourth rate county town; so in fact it scarcely deserves the name of a town; and the inhabitants, vain as they are of its well earned reputation as the German Athens, take a pride in having it considered merely a large village: his revenue is less than that of many a British Peer, great Commoner, or commercial Millionist. Yet “while the treasures of more weighty potentates were insufficient to meet the necessities of their political relations, his confined revenues could give independence and careless leisure to the men who were gaining for Germany its intellectual reputation.” It is not too much to say that for that intellectual reputation, high as it is, and lasting as it will be, Germany is little less beholden to the Duke of Weimar's well-bestowed patronage, than to the genius of Wieland, and Schiller and Goëthe. “In