<g>In</g> addition to the personal anecdotes, or ‘pithy sayings,’ already introduced, the following are too original and piquant to be overlooked:--“We were talking one day,” says the family chronicler, “of an old drunken fellow, who having used his body to sad disorder in drinking all his lifetime, and at last giving it over, he presently died. The fact being thus brought before him, the Marquis observed, ‘there was nothing to be wondered at in such a termination of the man’s life; for if you take a brand,’ said he, ‘out of the fire that is thoroughly burnt, it will fall to pieces; but if you let it lie there still, it may remain a pretty while before it is turned to ashes.’”
This clearly shows that his Lordship was not a novice in the science of pathology; for, had he made the ‘anatomy of drunkenness’ his particular study, he could not have expressed himself by a figure that more completely illustrates the case. The burnt log may not only last longer, but also preserve its shape, and diffuse light and heat through the whole apartment, while it remains in the fire; but if suddenly removed, and the fire extinguished, it is soon transformed into a heap of black ashes. The comparison applies very forcibly to those in whom the pernicious habit of spirit-drinking has been long a rooted evil. If they suddenly reform, the constitution--to use the same figure--has been so thoroughly carbonized, that, on the artificial temperature being withdrawn, it breaks down like the charred firebrand and is extinguished; but if cautiously and gradually withdrawn, before the charring process has reached the core, it may live to furnish a better light than any that could be expected from it while in the furnace of dissipation. In the Marquess’s time, as already noticed, the habit of drinking was carried to a most fatal excess; and we may readily believe that the ‘apophthegm’ here recorded, was the result of personal observation among the troops of his own garrison, who--
“Red-hot with drinking; So full of valour that they smote the air For breathing in their faces.”
As the preceding anecdote shows the venerable Marquess as a pathologist, so the following exhibits him in the more congenial character of a quaint theologian:--“I was walking one day with his lordship,” says the narrator, “in the private walk about the Great Tower,[281] and there we spied where a bird had made her nest, whom we disturbed from hatching her young ones, and sitting upon her eggs; which act of nature my lord compared to the manner of the creation: ‘For,’ said he, ‘God having made his nest in the world, and brought forth his young at first imperfected, did by his Spirit _incubate_, and by his wings of prudence spread over them, he gave them life and power; and by his word he brake the shell--_et sic pullulavit mundum_.’” This method of giving a quaint and solemn turn to the most familiar incidents of life was characteristic of the times, and often introduced into their homilies by the clergy, who made use of the most homely figures to illustrate some of the highest questions in theology. But from the Marquess of Worcester, then at a very advanced age, the effort to extract a moral, or to expound a scriptural text, came very gracefully; and he omits no opportunity, as we perceive, of improving others, by directing their thoughts to those passages of scripture with which his own mind was familiar. It is almost impossible, however, to resist the ludicrous ideas which religious sentiment is made to conjure up when employed by the Parliamentary leaders, and those irreverent applications of scripture which are to be found, not only in their daily conversations, but in their speeches, and even dispatches. _Cant_ was the fashion of the day; and where a letter was not profusely interlarded with the language and figures of Holy Writ, the author was liable to be suspected of indifference or disaffection to the cause.