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Updated: June 27, 2025
If it respects the people, it can only drive them to despair; if it be confined to the sovereign, our advice, not our panegyrick, is now required, and Europe is to be preserved from ruin, not by our eloquence, but our sincerity. Respect to his majesty, my lords, will be best shown by preserving his influence in other nations, and his authority in his own empire.
I objected also to what appears an anticlimax of praise, when contrasted with the preceding panegyrick, 'and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure! 'Is not harmless pleasure very tame? JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, harmless pleasure is the highest praise.
He was first censor, then elect, and treasurer of the college of physicians; of which, in 1705, he was chosen president, and held his office till, in 1708, he died, in a degree of estimation suitable to a man so variously accomplished, that king Charles had honoured him with this panegyrick, that "he was as learned as any of the college, and as well bred as any of the court."
If it should be granted, my lords, that there is nothing in these representations exaggerated beyond the truth, and that nothing is represented in an improper light, what consequence can we draw, but that the followers of this gentleman, make use of those arts which have always been practised by the candidates of preferment, that they endeavour to gain their patron's smile by flattery and panegyrick, and to keep it by assiduity and an appearance of gratitude.
Every one knows that panegyrick is, in its own nature, no easy task, and that to defend is much more difficult than to attack; consider, then, says he, what industry, what assiduity it must require, to praise and vindicate a ministry like ours.
There are, sir, men, I know, to whom this panegyrick will seem romantick and chimerical, men, to whom integrity and conscience are idle sounds, men, who are content to catch the word of their leader, who have no sense of the obligation of any law but the supreme will of him that pays them, and who know not any virtue but diligence in attendance, and readiness in obedience.
I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves 'tis to write your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer.
This, my lords, is a topick so fruitful of panegyrick, and so happily adapted to the imagination of a person long used to celebrate the wisdom and integrity of ministers, that, were not the present question of too great importance to admit of false concessions, I should suffer it to remain without controversy.
Then Mr. CLUTTERBUCK seconded the motion in this manner: That I am not able to add any thing to the encomium of the right honourable gentleman nominated to the president's chair, gives me no concern, because I am confident, that in the opinion of this assembly, his name alone includes all panegyrick, and that he who recommends Arthur ONSLOW, esquire, will never be required to give the reason of his choice.
The peculiar orthography of the writer is defended in the preface, for he allows himself not only such divergencies as 'tremenduous, 'authour, 'ambassadour, but also 'authentick' and 'panegyrick. The dedication of the first edition to Paoli was dated on his own birthday, and the book ran to a third edition before the October of the same year.
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