[Laughing.] Allowed. I was contending that Charles the Second had wit, and a keen survey of men and things: he had the literary-philosophic turn, in short. He wasn't good, he wasn't beautiful, he wasn't much of a Protestant, or a Constitutional Sovereign; but it is my long-standing theory that he was an indolent original genius of the first water, and a fine character spoiled. Here, billy, quack, quack, quack!
WETHERELL
Your indolent original point of view! I don't deny we have some pretty valuable bequests from that bacchanalian reign: the Habeas Corpus Act, for instance. But Charles himself! Who is a neater Pocket Compendium of all the vices? How are you going to excuse him? Because he was weak?
CLAY
Why do you think he must be excused? My pious intention is only to extra-illustrate him: "naught extenuate, and naught set down in malice." I mean to provide the ordinary listener at the Institute with a little dispassionate extra acquaintanceship, pleasant in its nature, with the gentleman in question; and I distinctly mean not to tamper with what knowledge of him he may have acquired on other themes, and from other sources. You see how sly a plan of campaign it is. But your adjective, Wetherell, will never do. Weak? Where did you hear that fiddle-faddle? He had the most tremendous will. Repeatedly, and with the greatest severity and despatch, he took matters over into his own hands; and very often he was right, and ahead of contemporary policy. Look at the way he prorogued Parliament, in the May of 1679, after the famous quarrel over the trial of the five lords; the way he rejected the application of the Roos divorce bill, shaped so as to give himself latitude and precedent; his speech in the Upper House, insisting on holding to the terms of pardon which he had offered from Breda; his letters to the young Duke of Gloucester, when there was rumor of a change of religion; or, to come to smaller and uglier matters, look at his obstinate maintenance of his right to appoint the ladies of the Queen's bedchamber, his whole inexcusable treatment of the great Chancellor. Weak! Haven't you read Green? Green, who comes down hard on him, would sooner have you think him an accomplished tyrant, and so should I.
WETHERELL
Ungrateful, then. He was ungrateful to the very people who brought about the Restoration, wasn't he?—Rhoda, these swans are actually fatter than Lord Whidbourne's. (Do you like to hear Clay talk? I am egging him on; it does me good.)
MRS. WETHERELL
I shall ask him to dinner, Percy, to atone for you. Yes: it is great to find so much animation expended on dead issues.