RECOLLECTIONS OF PALEY.
From Best's Personal Memorials.
Some one came up to Paley and made an excuse for a friend, who was obliged to defer an intended visit to the subdeanery, because a man who had promised to pay him some money in April, could not pay it till May. "A common case," said Paley. We all laughed. Paley, by way of rewarding us for our complaisance in being pleased with what was recommended chiefly by the quaintness of his manner, went on:—"A man should never paay mooney till he can't help it; soomething maay happen."
At another time he said, "I always desire my wife and daughters to pay ready money. It is of no use to desire them to buy only what they want; they will always imagine they want what they wish to buy; but that paying ready mooney is such a check upon their imaginaation."
Paley's education had been sufficiently hardy. "My father rode to Peterborough, and I rode after him, on a horse that I could not manage. I tumbled off. My father, without looking back, cried out, 'Get up again, Will.' When I set up a carriage, it was thought right that my armorial bearings should appear on the panels. Now, we had none of us ever heard of the Paley arms; none of us had ever dreamed that such things existed, or had ever been. All the old folks of the family were consulted; they knew nothing about it. Great search was made, however, and at last we found a silver tankard, on which was engraved a coat of arms. It was carried by common consent that these must be the Paley arms; they were painted on the carriage, and looked very handsome. The carriage went on very well with them; and it was not till six months afterwards that we found out that the tankard had been bought at a sale!"
He told me, "when I wanted to write any thing particularly well,—to do better than ordinary,—I used to order a post-chaise and go to Longtown; it is the first stage from Carlisle towards the north; there is a comfortable, quiet inn there. I asked for a room to myself; there then I was, safe from the bustle and trouble of a family; and there I remained as long as I liked, or till I had finished what I was about." I said, "That is a very curious anecdote;" and I said it in a tone which, from a certain change in his countenance, I believe to have set him on musing how this anecdote would appear in the history of his life. Paley took his rides on horseback occasionally, but always alone, without the attendance even of a servant. "I am so bad a horseman, that if any man on horseback was to come near me when I am riding, I should certainly have a fall; company would take off my attention, and I have need of all I can command to manage my horse and keep my seat; I have got a horse, the quietest creature that ever lived, one that at Carlisle used to be covered with children from the ears to the tail." Understanding all this, and seeing him gambadoing on the race-course, I turned my horse's head another way. "I saw what you meant this morning; it was very considerate of you; I am much obliged to you." Paley was too careful of petty expenses, as is frequently the case with those who have had but narrow incomes in early life. He kept a sufficiently handsome establishment as subdean, but he was stingy. A plentiful fall of snow took place during an evening party at the precentors's; two of Mr. Subdean's daughters were there; he showed great anxiety on account of the necessity that seemed to have arisen of sending them home in a sedan-chair; taking the advice of several of the company, whether such necessity really and inevitably existed, he said to me, "It is only next door." "The houses touch," said I, "but it is a long round to your door; the length of both houses and then through the garden in front of your house." He consulted the precentor, who, to put the matter in a right point of view, cried out, "Let the girls have a chair; it is only three-pence a piece."
He preached a sermon at Lincoln for the benefit of a charity school. In the course of this sermon he related, in familiar but sufficiently dignified language, a story of a man who, giving evidence on a trial respecting some prescriptive right claimed by the trustees of the charity, was browbeaten by the questioning counsel:—"I suppose the fact to which you swear happened when you were a charity boy, and used to go to school there?" The witness calmly replied, "I was a charity boy; and all the good that has befallen me in life has arisen from the education I received at that school." Paley drew hence an argument in favour of the institution for which he pleaded. The whole discourse pleased his auditors, and a deputation waited on him to request he would print it. "Gentlemen, I thank you for the compliment; but I must give the same answer that I have given on other like occasions; and that answer is—The tap is out." "The Archbishop of York," said he, speaking of a late primate, "preached one day at Carlisle; I was present, and felt muzzy and half asleep; when on a sudden I was roused, and began to prick up my ears; and what should I hear but a whole page of one of my own books quoted word for word; and this without the least acknowledgment, though it was a white bear; a passage that is often quoted and well known." "Now," said Dr. Milner, Dean of Carlisle, who related the anecdote, "guess what inference Paley drew from this plagiarism. No; if that court were full of people, not one of them would be able to guess: it was this—I suppose the archbishop's wife makes his grace's sermons for him."
The city has always been the province for satire; and the wits of King Charles's time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign.—Addison.