Quips and Quiddities Part 15

Hume and his wife and several of their children were with me. Hume repeated the old saying, "One fool makes many." "Ay, Mr. Hume,"

said I, pointing to the company, "you have a fine family."

CHARLES LAMB, _apud_ CRABB ROBINSON.

Plus on juge, moins on aime.

BALZAC, _Physiologie du Mariage_.

George the Third scolded Lord North for never going to the concert of antient music: "Your brother, the bishop," said the king, "never misses them, my lord." "Sir," answered the premier, "if I were as deaf as my brother, the bishop, I would never miss them either!"

R. H. BARHAM, _Life_.

_ON A MODERN ACTRESS._

"Miss Neilson's 'benefit'," one says; I ask to what the phrase refers; For, sure, when such an artist plays, The "benefit" is ours, not hers.

W. D. A.

Our king [William IV.] is _ultra_-popular. Have you heard Lord Alvanley's _bon mot_ concerning him? He was standing at the window at White's, when the king, with a thousand of his loving subjects at his heels, was walking up St. James's Street. A friend said to him, "What are you staring at, Alvanley?" "I am waiting to see his Majesty's pocket picked," was the reply.

MISS MITFORD, _Life and Letters_.

Methinks the lays of now-a-days Are painfully in earnest.

FREDERICK LOCKER, _London Lyrics_.

Hicks was talking to Thackeray of a certain gentleman's strange addiction to beer. "It's a great pity," said Hicks, "that he does not keep a check-rein on himself, for he is a marvellous fellow otherwise--I mean, for talent I hardly know his equal."

"No," retorted Thackeray, "he is a remarkable man.

Take him for half-and-half, we ne'er shall look upon his like again."

J. C. YOUNG, _Diary_.

Pro conibus calidis, conibus frigidis, Pro conibus mollibus, conibus rigidis, Pro conibus senibus Atque juvenibus, Gratias agimus fatis, Habuimus satis.

ANON.

One of the "Hooks and Eyes" was expatiating on the fact that he had dined three times at the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re's, and that on neither occasion had there been any fish at table. "I cannot account for it," he added. "I can," said Jerrold: "they ate it all upstairs."

CHARLES MACKAY, _Recollections_.

Veracity is a plant of paradise, and its seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.

_Machiavelli_, in GEORGE ELIOT's _Romola_.

I know not why my soul is rack'd: Why I ne'er smile as was my wont: I only know that, as a fact, I don't.

I used to roam o'er glen and glade, Buoyant and blithe as other folk: And not unfrequently I made A joke.

All day I sang; of love, of fame, Of fights our fathers fought of yore, Until the thing almost became A bore.

I cannot sing the old songs now It is not that I deem them low; 'Tis that I can't remember how They go.

C. S. CALVERLEY, _Fly Leaves_.

During [a] drive, Lord William L----, a man of fas.h.i.+on, but, like other of the great men of the day, an issuer of paper money discounted at high rates by the usurers, was thrown off his horse.

Mr. and Mrs. King immediately quitted the carriage, and placed the n.o.ble lord within. On this circ.u.mstance being mentioned in the clubs, Brummell observed it was only "a Bill _Jewly_ (duly) taken up and honoured."

GRONOW, _Recollections_.

She made the cleverest people quite ashamed, And even the good with inward envy groaned, Finding themselves so very much exceeded In their own way by all the things that she did.

LORD BYRON, _Don Juan_.

On the elevation of some childless person to the peerage, [Lady Charlotte Lindsay] remarked that he was "of the new Order, which seemed the popular one, not of the Barons, but the Barrens."

LORD HOUGHTON, _Monographs_.

Oft when petty annoyances ruffle the soul, And the temper defies philosophic control, The emotion is quelled, and a calm will succeed, Through the simple device of inhaling the Weed: Such magical power has the soothing Canaster To bring balmy content and good humour to Gaster.

LORD NEAVES, _Songs and Verses_.

Morgan John O'Connell had the ready wit of his country in a remarkable degree. We were walking by the Wey one day, when an Oxford graduate, who had a taste for botany, plucked a flower (_Balsamum impatiens_) from the river, remarking that it was a very rare plant. "It is an out-of-the-_Wey_ one, at any rate," was the instantaneous reply.

W. H. HARRISON, _University Magazine_.

Oh! 'tis the most tremendous bore Of all the bores I know, To have a friend who's lost his heart A short time ago.

_Bon Gaultier Ballads._

I never on any account allow my business to interfere with my drinking.

C. F. BROWNE, _Artemus Ward's Lecture_.