George Iv Quotes

“Scott and Terry created a political theatre in which a Hanovarian English monarch could appear on the stage of Edinburgh to act the part of a Stuart king.”
― Cairns Craig, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence

“In the meantime, his majesty, who has lived in dignified retirement since he came to the throne, has taken up his abode, with rural felicity, in a cottage in Windsor Forest; where he now, contemning all the pomp and follies of his youth, and this metropolis, passes his days amidst his cabbages, like Dioclesian, with innocence and tranquility, far from the intrigues of courtiers, and insensible to the murmering waves of the fluctuating populace...”
― John Galt, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West

“Whilst this change and enlargement of my mind was going on, his majesty King George IV, that gorgeous dowager, departed this life; an event of a serious kind to me, and to those with whom I had acted; for although our grief on the occasion was not of a very acute or lachrymose description, it was nevertheless heartfelt; for he stood in our opinion as the last of the regal kings, that old renowned race, who ruled with a will of their own, and were surrounded with worshippers.

'Never more,' said I, 'shall we have a monarch that will think his own will equivalent to law. His successors hereafter will only endeavour to think agreeably to their subjects; but the race of independent kings is gone forever.' In a word, the tidings of his death, though for some time expected, really smote me as a sudden and extraordinary event. Had I heard that the lions had become extinct on the face of the earth, I could not have been more filled, for a season, with wonder and a kind of sorrow.”
― John Galt, The Member: An Autobiography

“Among all the public worthies whom the approach of Majesty called into action, as the return of spring does the busy bees, none were more alert and alive to the dignity and importance of their office than the worshipful municipality of Leith. Some unknown power, which deemed itself appalling to the whole Magistracy of the ancient and loyal town, ordained that the King should land on the odiferous shores of the fishing village of Newhaven. But Bailie Macfie, as he sat at the head of the Council board with his valient peers, the intrepid Bailie Reoch and Bailie Newton, snapped his fingers at the huge bugbear, and it fled wailing away, discomfited like the spirit of Loda from the spear of Fingal, and was visible no more.”
― John Galt, The Ayrshire Legatees, The Steam-Boat, The Gathering of the West

“As Walter Scott showed, one could preserve the most intense passion for Caledonia stern and wild, one's own, one's native land, while rejoicing in the triumphs of the British armed forces over Napoleon and expressing devout loyalty to the Hanovarian dynasty, which, despite the madness of George III and the profligacy of his son and heir, had come to represent for Britons not only the virtues of sturdy monarchy under the sublime Constitution, but, most improbably, family values.”
― Angus Calder, Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland