925. Fletcher, Bishop of Nismes, was the son of a tallow-chandler. A proud duke once endeavoured to mortify the prelate, by saying, at the levee, that he smelt of tallow: to which the bishop replied, My lord, I am the son of a chandler, it is true, and if your lordship had been, you would have remained so all the days of your life.
926. Zimmerman, who was very eminent as a physician, went from Hanover to attend Frederic the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world? This was a rude speech, and an unpleasant pill for the doctor; but the dose he gave the king in return, was a judicious mixture of truth and flattery: Not so many as your majesty, nor with so much honour to myself.
927. During the riots of 1780, most persons in London, in order to save their houses from being burned or pulled down, wrote on the outside, No Popery! Old Grimaldi, to avoid all mistakes, wrote on his, No Religion.
928. Mr. Palmer going home, after the business of the theatre was concluded one evening, saw a man lying on the ground, with another on him beating him violently; upon this he remonstrated with the uppermost, telling him his conduct was unfair, and that he ought to let his opponent get up, and have an equal chance with him. The fellow drolly turned up his face to Mr. Palmer, and drily replied, Faith, sir, if you had been at as much trouble to get him down as I have, you would not be for letting him get up so readily.
929. A French ambassador at an audience with James I. conversed with such rapidity, gesticulation, and grimace, as excited the wonder and conversation of the court. James afterwards asked Lord Chancellor Bacon, what he thought of the ambassador. Sire, replied the philosopher, he appears a fine, tall, well-built man. I mean, interrupted the king, what do you think of his head? is it equal to his employment? Sire, answered Bacon, men of high stature very often resemble houses of four or five stories, where the upper one is always the worst furnished.
930. In Mr. Fox’s frolicsome days, a tradesman, who held his bill for two hundred pounds, called for payment. Charles said he could not then discharge it. How can that be? said the creditor; you have just now lying before you bank notes to a large amount. Those, replied Mr. Fox, are for paying my debts of honour. The tradesman immediately threw his bill into the fire. Now, sir, said he, mine is a debt of honour, which I cannot oblige you to pay. Charles, much to his honour, instantly paid him his full demand.
931. The Duke d’Ossuna, being viceroy of Naples, went on board a Spanish galley, on a festival, to exercise his right of delivering one of the wretches from punishment. On interrogating them why they were brought there, they all asserted their innocence but one, who confessed that his punishment was too small for his crimes. The duke said, Here, take away this rascal, lest he should corrupt all these honest men!
932. V— having satirized a nobleman who was powerful at court, the latter sought every occasion to revenge himself, and challenged V— to fight him with swords. We are not equals, replied the poet; you are very great, I am little; you are brave, I am cowardly; you wish to kill me—eh bien, I will consider myself as dead. This timely jest turned the anger of the nobleman into irrestrainable laughter, and they parted good friends.
933. In the time of the old court, the faces of the Parisian ladies were spotted with patches like pards, and plastered with rouge like so many red lions of the roadside. Lord Chesterfield, being at Paris, was asked by Voltaire, if he did not think some French ladies, then in company, whose cheeks were fashionably tinted, very beautiful. Excuse me, said Chesterfield, from giving an opinion: I am really no judge of amateur painting.
934. George II. passing through his chamber one evening, preceded by a single page, a small canvas bag of guineas, which he held in his hand, accidentally dropped, and one of them rolled under a closet door, in which wood was usually kept for the use of his bed-chamber. After the king had very deliberately picked up the money, he found himself deficient of a guinea; and, guessing where it went, Come, said he to the page, we must find this guinea; here, help me to throw out the wood. The page and he accordingly went to work, and after some time found it. Well, said the king, you have wrought hard, there is the guinea for your labour, but I would have nothing lost.