HONOUR CHEAPLY BOUGHT 103 



shabby when the return he had to make was set off 

 against the salary he received. A teacher of elocution, 

 the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, had enjoyed 

 a pension of the same amount for about twenty years, 

 through the influence of Lord Bute, " to enable him to 

 carry on his literary pursuits." l But small though the 

 allowance was, Herschel preferred the post of Royal 

 Astronomer at Windsor to the troubles of a teacher's 

 life at Bath. His friend Dr. Watson, not having yet 

 forgotten, it may be, the discreditable civil war be- 

 tween "the sharps" and "the blunts," in which the 

 King did not figure to advantage, four years before, 

 only echoed what would have been the general 

 sentiment of scientific men, had they known, as he 

 did, the money part of the arrangement, when he 

 exclaimed, " Never bought monarch honour so cheap ! " 

 It is far from pleasant to look back on this transaction 

 or on the one-sided record of it given by Miss Herschel. 

 Well would it have been had she laid the burden of 

 blame on advisers, whom apparently she was not 

 ignorant of. Probably it added to the bitterness 

 which dropped from her pen, that in the following 

 year, Pallas, or Mr. Pallas as he was called in this 

 country, a student of George IIL'S own University of 

 Gottingen, and a man of science far from equal to 

 Herschel, got an addition of 200 to his salary in 

 Russia ! 2 For the transaction, as we have seen, had a 

 shabbier look than appears on the surface. At least, 

 as it is represented, so it seems. Herschel was to give 

 lessons in astronomy to the Princesses of the Royal 

 Family, when called upon, and to receive the visitors 

 whom His Majesty might send. This might and did 



1 Watkins, Memoirs, etc., i. 104. * Scots Mag., 1785, p. 536. 



