915. Rose, private secretary to Louis XIV., having married his daughter to M. Portail, president of the parliament, was constantly receiving from his son-in-law, complaints of his daughter’s ill temper. To one of these he at length answered, that he was fully convinced of her misconduct, and was resolved to punish her for it: in short, that if he heard any more of it, he would disinherit her. He heard no more.

916. It was some years ago said in the parliament-house at Edinburgh, that a gentleman who was notorious for a pretty good appetite, had eaten away his senses. Poh! replied Erskine, they would not be a mouthful to a man of his bowels.

917. Sir Watkin Williams Wynne talking to a friend about the antiquity of his family, which he carried up to Noah, was told that he was a mere mushroom of yesterday. How so, pray? said the baronet. Why continued the other, when I was in Wales, a pedigree of a particular family was shown to me: it filled up above five large skins of parchment, and near the middle of it was a note in the margin—About this time the world was created.

918. A gentleman having occasion to call upon Mr. Joseph Graham, writer, found him at home in his writing chamber. He remarked the great heat of the apartment, and said, It was hot as an oven. So it ought, replied Mr. G., for ’tis here I make my bread.

919. Judge Burnet, son of the famous Bishop of Salisbury, when young, is said to have been of a wild and dissipated turn. Being one day found by his father in a very serious humour, What is the matter with you, Tom? said the bishop; what are you ruminating on? A greater work than your Lordship’s History of the Reformation, answered the son. Ay! what is that? asked the father. The reformation of myself, my lord, replied the son.

920. A facetious abbé having engaged a box at the opera-house at Paris, was turned out of his possession by a marshal of France, as remarkable for his ungentlemanlike behaviour as for his cowardice and meanness. The abbé, for his unjustifiable breach of good manners, brought his action in a court of honour, and solicited permission to be his own advocate, which was granted, when he pleaded to the following effect:—It is not of Monsieur Suffrein, who acted so nobly in the East Indies, that I complain; it is not of the Duke de Crebillon, who took Minorca, that I complain; it is not of the Comte de Grasse, who so bravely fought Lord Rodney, that I complain; but it is of Marshal ——, who took my box at the opera-house, and never took anything else. This most poignant stroke of satire so sensibly convinced the court that he had already inflicted punishment sufficient, that they refused to grant him a verdict—a fine compliment to the abbé’s wit.

921. Frederic, conqueror as he was, sustained a severe defeat at Coslin in the war of 1755. Some time after, at a review, he jocosely asked a soldier, who had got a deep cut in his cheek, Friend, at what alehouse did you get that scratch? I got it, said the soldier, at Coslin, where your majesty paid the reckoning.

922. During an action of Admiral Rodney with the French, a woman assisted at one of the guns on the main deck, and being asked by the admiral, what she did there? she replied, An’t please your honour, my husband is sent down to the cockpit wounded, and I am here to supply his place: do you think, your honour, I am afraid of the French?

923. The celebrated Bubb Doddington was very lethargic. Falling asleep one day after dinner with Sir Richard Temple and Lord Cobham, the general, the latter reproached Doddington with his drowsiness. Doddington denied having been asleep; and to prove he had not, offered to repeat all Lord Cobham had been saying. Cobham challenged him to do so. Doddington repeated a story, and Lord Cobham owned he had been telling it. And yet, said Doddington, I did not hear a word of it; but I went to sleep because I knew that about this time you would tell that story.

924. When the late Duchess of Kingston wished to be received at the court of Berlin, she got the Russian minister there to mention her intention to his Prussian majesty, and to tell him at the same time, that her fortune was at Rome, her bank at Venice, but that her heart was at Berlin. The king replied, I am sorry we are only intrusted with the worst part of her grace’s property.