"Now should I like to call that a most courtly compliment, but for my
life I cannot--it is so true."
"You pronounce a severe satire on your father's court, my friend; and
one that I hope it merits not."
"Merits! Perhaps not--for, though the youngest and least rational of my
father's children, I can perceive there are some about him who hit upon
truth occasionally, either by chance or intention. There's that rugged
bear, Sir Thomas Pride, whom, I have heard say, my father knighted with
a mopstick--he, I do believe, speaks truth, and of a truth follows one
scriptural virtue, being no respecter of persons. As to General George
Monk, my father trusts him--and so--yet have I observed, at any mention
of Charles Stuart's name, a cunning twinkling of the eye that may yet
kindle into loyalty.--I would as soon believe in his honesty as in his
lady's gentleness. Did you hear, by the way, what Jerry, my poor
disgraced beau, Jerry White, said of her? Why, that if her husband could
raise and command a regiment endowed with his wife's spirit, he might
storm the stronghold of sin, and make Satan a state prisoner. Then our
Irish Lord Chancellor--we call him the true Steele; and, indeed, any one
who ventures to tell my father he errs, deserves credit. Yes, Sir
William Steele may certainly be called a truth-teller. Not so our last
court novelty, Griffeth Williams of Carnarvon, Esq., who though he
affects to despise all modern titles, and boasts of his blood-ties with
the Princes of Wales, Kings of France, Arragon, Castile, and Man, with
the sovereigns of Englefield and Provence to boot, yet moves every
secret engine he can find to gain a paltry baronetcy! Even you, dear
Constance, would have smiled to see the grave and courtly salutations
that passed between him and the Earl of Warwick--the haughty Earl, who
refused to sit in the same house with Pride and Hewson--a circumstance,
by the way, that caused Jerry White to say, 'he had too much Pride to
attend to the mending of his soul.' The jest is lost unless you
remember that Hewson had been a cobbler. As to John Milton----"
"Touch him not," interrupted Constance; "let not your thoughtless mirth
light upon John Milton; there is that about the poet, which made me feel
the very first time I saw him, that-'Something holy lodges in that breast.' I remember the day well, now more than three years ago, while staying at
Hampton Court, (whither your gracious mother had commanded me,) and
reading to the Lady Claypole, near the small window of her
dressing-room, which opened into the conservatory, one sultry July
evening, when the last rays of the golden sun disturbed the sober and to
me more touching beauty of the silver night--at last I could no longer
see, and closed the volume; your sister, in sweet and gentle voice,
stayed me to repeat some passages from the 'Masque of Comus.' How
accurately I can call to mind her every tone, as it mingled with the
perfume of the myrtle and orange trees, impregnating the air at once
with harmony and fragrance.