According to a tradition that is not implausible, North and his friends took copies of _Anticipation_ into the House on the opening day and dispensed them gratis.[25] An apparent consequence of this was Tickell’s luckiest satirical stroke, by virtue of which _Anticipation_ lived on in the memory of anecdotists. Walpole, who was on the spot, reported that Col. Isaac Barré, an Opposition stalwart, “not having seen this pamphlet, the first day of the Session cited a foreign Governor with whom he was acquainted, exactly in the manner here ridiculed, and he also translated a French expression.”[26] This episode grew appreciably in the telling. In 1823 Joseph Jekyll told Tom Moore (who wrote down everything he heard) of the laughable effect on the House of Col. Barré’s speech; he being the only one (having just arrived from the country) ignorant of the pamphlet, and falling exactly into the same peculiarities which the pamphlet quizzed, particularly that of quoting French words and then translating them. At every new instance of this kind in his speech there was a roar of laughter from the House, which Barré, of course, could not understand.[27] But this was not the last refinement. The progress of the story, from contemporary witnesses to Jekyll and Moore and finally to “Senex” writing his recollections in _Blackwood’s_ in 1826, is an illustration and a warning of the ways of anecdotists. The humorous success of _Anticipation_, wrote “Senex,” I well remember.... The style of the speeches was so well imitated, and the matter in many cases so happily forestalled, that, like Vulcan among Homer’s gods, it caused inextinguishable laughter. What gave much zest to the joke was the ignorance of most of the usual speaking members that any such pamphlet existed. Their great surprise at the loud mirth excited by speeches intended to make a very different impression, and the frequent cries of “Spoke, Spoke!” the meaning of which they could not possibly comprehend, may be easily conceived. One of its effects was to shorten the debate, for, as the joke soon spread, many were afraid to address the House for fear of involving themselves in the predicament of those who had been so humorously anticipated.[28] _5_