Note 12 — Chapter IV · THE KING’S OR ‘GEORGIAN’ LIBRARY;—ITS COLLECTOR, AND ITS DONOR.

Lord Harcourt resigned his office of Governor to the Prince at the beginning of December, 1752. Scott, then the Prince’s tutor, was recommended to his office by Bolingbroke. The Bishop of Peterborough’s appointment as Preceptor was made in January, 1753. Among the books complained of, the Histoire de la Grande Bretagne of Father Orléans, and the Introduction à la vie du Roi Henri IV of another Jesuit, Father Péréfixe, are said to have been included. Another and more famous book, which was much in Prince George’s hands in his early years, was also obnoxious to the Whigs—Bolingbroke’s Idea of a Patriot King. But it would scarcely have been prudent in the malcontents to have put a work which (whatever its faults) ranks, to some extent, among our English classics, in the same expurgatory, or prohibitory, index with the books of Orléans and of Péréfixe. If George the Third got some harm out of Lord Bolingbroke’s book, he probably obtained also some good. Pure Whiggism—pure but not simple—has never been noted for any discriminating tolerance of spirit. And, in 1752, it was furious at the prospect that the continuance of its long domination was imperilled.