17 Sep. 1809 +

Parl y Reform

B. I. Necessity

Ch.18. Mischief of Idol-worship

Ch. Elogiums mischievous

Character uncognisible[?]

1

21

Take a fresh paper for Marginal – contracting[?]

§. Real character of a King uncognisible.

But this abstract King of yours (says some one) what have we to do with him, or with

your speculative your theoretical pictures of him whom we have and have had for these

50 years before our eyes, the very King – the very best of Kings actually sitting upon his throne –

The very King? you have him? – and before your eyes? Not you indeed, nor any thing

that deserves so much as to be called a picture of him: nothing but a sign-post

daubing which never has been, never can be so like to the /one/ King whose name is

written under it as any picture of a King in the abstract is like not only to that

one but to every other – including those /not excluding him/ to which it is least

like, provided always he be among those who are born with the prospect of a throne

before their eyes.

Whoever you are (unless it be one of those whose habits of personal intercourse with

him may have presented you with that knowledge which no man who is /is in the way to

be/ master of it ever communicates) what can you fancy yourself to know of him but

what you see in print. And that which you see in print, what is it?

{ Dispraise penal[?]; praise laid on with a trowel: a trowel of paper made out of

Anti Jacobin newspapers and Reviews /Oxford and Cambridge verses/.

Falshood the object of reward in every imaginable shape: punishment a milstone

avowedly hung over the head of truth: hung by a thread, and far[?] ready to drop into

every hand employed in cutting it. }