Hardly conceive of me. Let it be noised,
That through our intercession this revokement
And pardon comes—”
The king could not help smiling at the craft of the minister, in filching from his master the merit of the good action, though he himself had been the author of the evil complained of; and, turning to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George II.), he said, “You see, George, a minister will be a minister in every age and in every reign.”
RICHARD CROMWELL.
When, in 1650, Richard Cromwell succeeded his father Oliver in the protectorship, he received addresses from all parties in the kingdom, filled with the most extravagant professions of standing by him with their lives and fortunes, at the very moment that they were plotting his destruction. Richard was not quite so blind to all this as the world imagined; for after seven months’ mock government, as he was giving orders for the removal of his own furniture from Whitehall, he observed with what little ceremony they treated an old trunk, and begged of them to move it more carefully, “Because,” added he, “it contains the lives and fortunes of all the good people of England.”
DR. SOUTH.
Dr. South begins a sermon on this text, “The wages of sin is death,” as follows:—“Poor wages indeed, that a man can’t live by.”
SEVERE RETORT.
Soon after Lord Sidney’s elevation to the peerage, he happened to observe in company, that authors were often very ridiculous in the titles they gave. “That,” said a gentleman present, “is an error from which even kings appear not to be exempt.”