to ask you a question too? Why you read your fpeeches, when you can have none of the fame reasons ?" "Why truly, doctor," fays the king, "your question is a very pertinent one, and fo will be my answer. I have asked them fo often, and for so much money, that I am afhamed to look them in the face." XV. Vox populi. PRINCES, and great men, have had nick-names fometimes given them, of which posterity loft all traces of the meaning or the occafion; as king Charles II. being called Rowley, and the famous Ferdimand of Arragon, Jean Gipon, as Brantome fays, in his little memoir of that king, the French called him in derifion, but he could never learn why; and Lewis X. of France, Hutin. I have been told, by an old gentleman of that time, the true occafion of king Charles's; "That there was an old goat that used to run about the privy-garden, that that they had given this name to, a rank lecherous devil, that every body knew and used to stroke, because he was goodhumoured and familiar; and fo they applied this name to the other." This gentleman, who was grandfon to a fecretary of ftate, (Mr. Nicholas) affirmed this, as hav-ing known all the perfons concerned, king, garden and goat. So probably, that John Gipon was fome fhrewd rascal of an attorney, very oppreffive to his neighbours, without the leaft regard to his word, who loved God and man alike, except one, whom he preferred to both, and who was ready to turn his hand to any thing; for just fuch was the character of Ferdinand only in high life. Thefe fort of fhort farcafms or enco miums on the great, in their life-times, like proverbial expreffions, commonly give the fenfe of the people; and are juster representations than all the laboured characters of their friends or hiftorians. XVI. In XVI, Ta this thing the Lord pardon thy fervant, that when my mafter cometh into the boufe of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bor myself ' in the boufe of Rimmon; when I bow myself in the boufe of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy fervant in this thing. 2 Kings, V. 18. Every one has a certain favourite paffion, which is properly and always his own, 'the great boy's hobby-horfe for life! like Sir W. Bateman's country-house at, that when making his will, he had given away all the other articles, and his lawyer told him he had forgot, he answered with warmth, "Not that, I cannot part with that, and died.” Pope It was a pleasant mummery of a devout lady, in the civil wars of Caftile, against the emperor Charles V. in the beginning of his reign, as Brantome tells it. "Donna Maria de Padilla, one of the most noble and virtuous ladies in Spain, and of the most zealous in the rebellion, to which she also inftigated her noble husband, being at the end of her great wealth in this enterprize, and not having wherewith to keep keep the foldiers from deferting, took all the gold and filver of the relics of the great church of Toledo'; but it was with a holy, and devout ceremony, and which favoured nothing of profanenefs. Entering the church on her knees, with her hands joined, and covered with a black veil; with a fad and whining accent, beating her breast, and fighing piteously and weeping, with two great flam. beaus carried flowly before her; and when fhe had decently pillaged the fhrine, and an. cient facred repofitory, returned with the fe folemn proceffion and ceremony. Brantome Vie d'Ant. de Ceva.-What faint would not have been bit with this devout facrilege? or could have been upon his guard, and imagined all this apparatus (in his own way) was to pick his pocket and plunder him! This is a perfon of great quality and fenfe, who braves heaven and earth, while her fond fuperftition ridiculously thinks to reconcile them with her private interest and paffions; but a poor curate, on the fame occafion, fhewed what human nature is, Compare Livy's defcription of the removing the facred richies of the temples of Veii to Rome, by Camil. lus, V.` 22. without without defigning it. "He had taken it into his head to espouse this cause to that degree, that he never failed on the Sunday to recommend to his parishioners, from his pulpit, a Pater-nofter and an Ave-Maria for Don John de Padilla, and his noble wife, and another of each for the holy fedition and revolt; 'till after some weeks, fortune would have it that the troops of Padilla, paffing through his village, eat up all his whole family of poultry, with all his provifion of bacon; and, worst of all! carried off his favourite house-keeper. The Sunday after he made his complaint from the pulpit, and related at length all the damage his old friends had done him, and, above all, that they had inveigled away poor Catherine, whom he named without ceremony, giving to the Devil, and defiring his parishioners to do so too, all these feditious rebels against their lawful fovereign, whom God himself had put over them." Brantome and Guevara's Golden Epiftles, L. I. p. 173. At the time that Hannibal was in the height of his fuccefs and conquefts in Italy, an exprefs came to him from Carthage, that the lot had fallen on his only fon to be fa crificed |