Byron must have
known this striking example of the scoundrel species, but he appears
to have forgotten him when he propounded his theory of villainy. Then
there was Pea-green Haynes, who was also a fine sample of folly and
rascality mingled. Haynes regarded himself as the most injured man on
earth; he never performed an unselfish action, it is true, and he
flung away a fine patrimony on his own pleasures, yet he whined and
held himself up as an example of suffering virtue. Then there was the
precious Regent. What a creature! Good men and bad men unite in saying
that he was absolutely without a virtue; the shrewd, calculating
Greville described him in words that burn; the great Duke, his chief
subject, uses language of dry scorn--"The king could only act the part
of a gentleman for ten minutes at a time"; and we find that the
commonest satellites of the Court despised the wicked fribble who wore
the crown of England. Faithless to women, faithless to men, a coward,
a liar, a mean and grovelling cheat, George IV. nevertheless clung to
a belief in his own virtues; and, if we study the account of his
farcical progress through Scotland, we find that he imagined himself
to be a useful and genuinely kingly personage.
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