The prince, in return, doubled the quantity, and sent him forty bottles.
This is equal to the joke of Rochester on the occasion of Charles II.’s crew of rakes writing pieces of poetry and handing them to Dryden, so that he might decide which was the prettiest poet. Rochester finished his piece in a few minutes; and Dryden decided that it was the best. On reading it, the lines were found to be the following:—
“I promise to pay, to the order of John Dryden, twenty pounds.—Rochester.”
The following hyperbolical compliment paid to Louis XIV., after his numerous victories, is almost literally translated from the French of a Gascon author of those days, and, extraordinary as it may seem, is said to have obtained for the writer of it the premium alluded to in his gasconade:—
To him whose muse in lofty strains
Shall blazon Louis’ famed campaigns
And every great exploit,
Belongs the prize of twenty pounds:—
What! only twenty! Blood and wounds!
For each ’tis scarce a doit.[[17]]