that your highness had many there, so much more capable though none more willing, that I durst never offer your royal highness mine. It may be too great a presumption in me to do it now, but however, I will venture to tell your highness that there is no man in the world upon whom your highness may more freely lay your commands, nor that will endeavour more to have them punctually obeyed than myself.
I came into this country this day se'nnight, and I went immediately to wait upon the Prince and Princess, who I found so well that I cannot believe she wants any remedies, but yet she tells me she intends to go to the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, from which I hope she will receive all the
genius, and it ended fatally, for the actions sinking on the sudden, on the breaking out of a new war, that sunk him into a melancholy which quite distracted him. The town of Amsterdam was for many years conducted by him as by a dictator, and that had exposed them to as many errors as the irregularity of his notions suggested," i. 573. Temple, in writing about Van Beuninghen to Lord Arlington, prepares him for this terrible habit of talking. "Your lordship," he says, "will find nothing to lessen your esteem of his person, unless it be that he is not always so willing to hear as to be heard, and out of the abundance of his imagination is apt to reason a man to death . . . . . I have taken some care to prevent his supplying this talent too much in your conversations."—ii. 119.
