A TRAFALGAR ANECDOTE.
The Belleisle, Captain Haywood, when dismasted, was attacked by five ships at once. Captain H. finding himself thus assailed, looked over the gangway, and, shaking his head at his enemies, involuntarily ejaculated, “I’ll not strike for any of you—no, that I won’t.” A dauntless old quarter-master, who was the captain of the foremast gun on the quarterdeck, hearing what his captain said, immediately remarked, “Who the devil asked you?”
MACPHERSON.
When Macpherson’s Homer came out (a book universally decried for a bombastical, affected style), a lady remarked one evening, in a large company, to Dr. Johnson, that she had been endeavouring to read it, but the style appeared so old, she could not go through it with any satisfaction. “You are perfectly right, madam,” says Johnson; “it is as old as the building of Babel.”
WRITING DOWN A CHARACTER.
Much about the time of the universal damnation of the above book, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, being in company with a number of beaux esprits, after haranguing with great vehemence and nationality on the general talents of Mr. Macpherson, he asserted there was not a man in England had ever the knack of writing down a character more than he had. “I believe it most sincerely,” says a gentleman present; “and I think he has given a very recent proof of it, by writing down one of the first characters of all antiquity.”
APT QUOTATION.
Dr. Paris, author of the well-known work on Diet, observing many of the miners in Cornwall to be deprived of legs and arms, and otherwise maimed, inquired the cause, and was shocked to learn that these men had been exposed for ages to the greatest dangers, from their using a metal in their excavations, which sometimes struck fire, and exploded the blasts prematurely. He immediately suggested a metal which was equally fitted for their trade, and was not liable to this dreadful objection. The poor men, truly grateful for his kindness, afterwards presented him with a piece of plate; on which was the following singularly apt and happy quotation from Virgil:—
“————- Manet altâ mente repostum
Judicium Paridis, spretæque injuria formæ.”