THEODORE HOOK, when surprised, one evening, in his arm-chair, two or three hours after dinner, is reported to have apologised, by saying: "When one is alone, the bottle _does_ come round so often." It was Sir Hercules Langrishe, who, being asked, on a similar occasion, "Have you finished all that port (three bottles) without assistance?" answered, "No, not quite that; I had the assistance of a bottle of Madeira."
WHEN Horne Tooke was at school, the boys asked him "what his father was?" Tooke answered, "A Turkey merchant." (He was a poulterer.)
He once said to his brother, a pompous man, "You and I have reversed the natural course of things; you have risen by your gravity; I have sunk by my levity."
To Judge Ashhurst's remark, that the law was open to all, both to the rich and to the poor, Tooke replied, "So is the London tavern."
He said that Hume wrote his history, as witches say their prayers--backwards.
COUNSELLOR Lamb, an old man when Lord Erskine was in the height of his reputation, was of timid manners and nervous disposition, usually prefacing his pleadings with an apology to that effect; and on one occasion, when opposed, in some cause, to Erskine, he happened to remark that "he felt himself growing more and more timid as he grew older." "No wonder," replied the witty, but relentless barrister; "every one knows the older a _lamb_ grows, the more _sheepish_ he becomes."
I SHALL not easily forget the sarcasm of Swift's simile as he told us of the Prince of Orange's harangue to the mob of Portsmouth:--"We are come," said he, "for your good--for _all_ your _goods_." "A universal principle," added Swift, "of all governments; but, like most other truths, only told by mistake."--_Ethel Churchill._
TALLEYRAND being asked, if a certain authoress, whom he had long since known, but who belonged rather to the last age, was not "a little tiresome?" "Not at all," said he, "she was perfectly tiresome."
A gentleman in company was one day making a somewhat zealous eulogy of his mother's beauty, dwelling upon the topic at uncalled for length--he himself having certainly inherited no portion of that kind under the marriage of his parents. "It was your father, then, apparently, who may not have been very well favoured," was Talleyrand's remark, which at once released the circle from the subject.