Commodore Keppel "beards" the Dey of Algiers.—A Goat.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, when twenty-five, sailed to the Mediterranean in 1749 with the Hon. Augustus Keppel, then a captain in the navy, and afterwards Viscount Keppel. In 1750, Commodore Keppel returned to Algiers to remonstrate with the dey on the renewed depredations of the Corsairs. The dey, surprised at his boldness, for he anchored close to the palace, and attended by his captain and a barge's crew, went boldly into the presence of the Algerine monarch to demand satisfaction, exclaimed, that he wondered at the insolence of the King of Great Britain sending him a beardless boy.
Keppel was only twenty-four, but he is said to have answered, "that had his Majesty, the King of Great Britain, estimated the degree of wisdom by the length of the beard, he would have sent him a goat as an ambassador." Northcote is in doubt of the truth of this speech having been made, but says, that it is certain Keppel answered with great boldness.[269] The tyrant is said to have actually ordered his mutes to advance with the bow-string, telling the commodore that his life should answer for his audacity. Keppel quietly pointed out to the dey the squadron at anchor, and told him, that if it was his pleasure to put him to death, there were Englishmen enough on board to make a funeral pile of his capital. The dey cooled a little, allowed the commodore to depart, and made satisfaction for the damage done, and promised to abstain from violence in future.
CALVES AND KINE.
The little anecdote of Gilpin and the three cows illustrates one elegant use of the subjects of the following paragraphs. What home landscape like that painted by Alfred Tennyson would be perfect without its cows? Many anecdotes of them could be collected. The Irish are celebrated for their "bulls," one of them is not the worse for having "Bulls" for its subject. Patrick was telling, so the story goes, that there were four "Bull Inns" in a certain English town. "There are but three," said a native of the place, who knew them well; "the Black Bull, the White Bull, and the Red Bull,—where is the fourth?"—"Sure and do you not know, the Dun Cow—the best of them all?" replied the unconscious Milesian.