“Boswell went from Berlin to Charlottenburg while the entertainments were there on account of the betrothing of the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick to the Prince of Prussia; all the ladies and gentlemen pressed eagerly to get places at the windows of the palace, in order to see the royal families at supper. Boswell found this a little ridiculous, so came up to his acquaintances and said, ‘Allons, allons, je vous en prie voyons la seconde table; je vous assure il vaut mieux la peine; ces gens mangent plus que les autres?’ (‘Come, come, pray do let us go see the second table; I assure you it is more worth while; they eat more than the others.’)”
“Boswell said that Sir Joseph Yorke was so anxious lest people should forget that he was an ambassador, that he held his head as high and spoke as little as possible. As in the infancy of painting it was found necessary to write below a picture, this is a cow, or this is a horse, so from the mouth of Sir Joe cometh a label with these words—‘I am an ambassador.’”
“Boswell said that the descriptions of human life which we find in books are very false, because written in retirement. When a painter would take a portrait or a landscape, he is always sure to be present, whereas a painter of human life gets away from the object, buries himself in the shade, or basks in the sunshine, and consequently gives either too black or too gay a creature of his imagination, which he calls human life.”
“Two Scotch Highlanders were benighted, and lay down to sleep on the side of a mountain. After they had lain a little, one of them got up, but soon returned again. The other asked him, ‘What’s this, Donald? what have you been about?’ Duncan replied, ‘I was only bringing a stane to put under my head.’ Donald started up and cried, ‘H—g your effeminacy, man! canna ye sleep without a stane aneath your head?’”
Mr. Burnet.
“After the Prince of Prussia had been defeated by the Austrians, the King, who was marching desperate against them, wrote to him thus:—‘Mon frère, Daun vous a traité comme un petit Ecolier. Il vous a foueté avec des verges. Un homme qui va mourir, n’a rien d’dissimuler.’”
Mr. Burnet.
“Lord Auchinleck was one of the most firm and indefatigable judges that ever lived. Brown at Utrecht said that he was one of those great beams which are placed here and there to support the edifice of Society.”
I was present.
“Boswell said that Berkley[166] reasoned himself out of house and home.”