DANGER OF DOING HOMAGE.
Mr. Carbonel, the wine-merchant, who served George the Third, was a great favourite with the good old king, and was admitted to the honours of the Royal Hunt. Returning from the chase one day, his majesty entered, in his usual affable manner, into conversation with him, riding side by side with him, for some distance. Lord Walsingham was in attendance, and watching an opportunity, whispered to Mr. Carbonel, that he had not once taken off his hat before his majesty. “What’s that, what’s that, Walsingham!” inquired the good-humoured monarch. Mr. Carbonel at once said, “I find I have been guilty of unintentional disrespect to your majesty, in not taking off my hat; but your majesty will please to observe that whenever I hunt, my hat is fastened to my wig, and my wig to my head, and I am on the back of a high-spirited horse; so that if anything goes off, we must all go off together.” The king laughed heartily at this whimsical apology.
SHERIDAN’S GREEK.
Lord Belgrave having clenched a speech in the House of Commons with a long Greek quotation, Sheridan, in reply, admitted the force of the quotation so far as it went; “But,” said he, “had the noble lord proceeded a little farther, and completed the passage, he would have seen that it applied the other way.” Sheridan then spouted something, ore rotundo, which had all the ais, ois, kous, and koes, that gave the world assurance of a Greek quotation; upon which Lord Belgrave very promptly and handsomely complimented the honourable member on his readiness of recollection, and frankly admitted that the continuation of the passage had the tendency ascribed to it by Mr. Sheridan, and that he had overlooked it at the moment when he gave his quotation. On the breaking up of the House, Fox, who piqued himself on having some Greek, went up to Sheridan, and asked him, “Sheridan, how came you to be so ready with that passage? It certainly is as you say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it.” It is almost unnecessary to observe that there was no Greek at all in Sheridan’s impromptu.
SHERIDAN AND CUMBERLAND.
When the “School for Scandal” came out, Cumberland’s children prevailed upon their father to take them to see it: they had the stage-box; their father was seated behind them; and, as the story was told by a gentleman, a friend of Sheridan’s, who was close by, every time the children laughed at what was going on on the stage, he pinched them, and said, “What are you laughing at, my dear little folks? you should not laugh, my angels; there is nothing to laugh at;” and then, in an under tone, “Keep still, you little dunces.” Sheridan having been told of this long afterwards, said, “It was very ungrateful in Cumberland to have been displeased with his poor children for laughing at my comedy; for I went the other night to see his tragedy, and laughed at it from beginning to end.”
WHIMSICAL PUN.
When the Marquis of Tullibardin was at Cambridge, he was made the subject of a pun, by the young waggish Cantabs, in the following manner: they took their opportunity and locked the young nobleman up in his apartments, and then calling to their fellows with much clamour, shouted, “See Cicero in prison!” The Marquis was then expostulating through the open window, and begging to be released. “Cicero in prison!” said the puzzled Cantabs, not comprehending the joke. “Yes,” said the joker, “it is Tully-barr’d-in.”
ANECDOTE OF PARSON PATEN.