They are his and his heirs for ever.”
It may fairly be presumed that a laugh went round the table; but Powis was so fully convinced that he had hit upon the true reason, that on meeting Yorke some months after, he inquired gravely about the progress of his volume.
However, Powis seems to have been a mark for the wits, as we find by some lines on the Bench, by the memorable Duke of Wharton:—
“When Powis sums up a cause without a blunder;
And honest Price shall trim and truckle under;
When Eyre his haughtiness shall lay aside,
And Tracy’s generous soul shall swell with pride,
Then will I cease my charmer to adore,
And think of love and politics no more.”
Yorke was now beginning to feel his way in his profession; and if poverty had been his original stimulus, he had a fair prospect of exchanging it for wealth. The dictum of Thurlow on this subject is proverbial. When asked by some friend to advise his son as to “the way he should go” to rise at the bar, that rough functionary said, “Let him spend all his fortune—then marry, and spend his wife’s fortune; and then let him return to his books, and he may have some chance of business.”