PRESENTS.
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The great are fond of presents; but they are superlatively ungrateful. Little people, in their need of protection, instinctively apply to the great, with a bribe in their hand: and they do so wisely. Flattered self-love yields what justice or benevolence alone might deny. It is, however, by a succession of trifling gifts that the experienced toad-eater makes way with a patron. Women (par parenthèse) enter into the details of toad-eating much better than men.
An ignoramus offers something valuable, something above his means to afford; and he “takes nothing by the motion;” for neither money, nor money’s worth is valued by those whose wants are supplied as soon as they arise. Such persons receive without compunction or consideration; and are neither obliged, nor disposed to return in kind. It is courtesy, and not pecuniary value they want; and it enters not into their conception that the value, which is nothing to them, may be an inconvenient sacrifice to the donor. Valuable presents must be rare; while it is unceasing homage that wins. The spooneys alone are taken in, and strive to astonish by the splendour of their gifts. The “able-bodied” toadies “win with honest trifles to betray to deepest consequences.”
Kings, however, like substantial presents; but they will take anything, even from the poorest of their subjects. When George the Third went to return thanksgivings at St. Paul’s, on the recovery of his health, a picture was made by Dayes of the ceremony in the interior of the church. This picture was bought by an engraver, and a print executed from it; and an application was made for the king’s permission to dedicate the work to him. The permission was graciously granted by that patron of the arts; with a stipulation that the original picture should be consigned to himself: a proposition with which the spirited engraver refused to comply.
Courtiers laud the liberality of kings; and, in the eyes of poets laureate, regal munificence is the first of virtues: but a present-taking king is less mischievous than he, whom a silly vanity and ignorance of the value of money, betrays into wasting the treasure which is not his own. Besides, a greedy monarch is further excusable, inasmuch as the cupidity of those who surround him, may be supposed to give an intelligible lesson: he has only to profit by the example.