English literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- Anecdotes; Litterateurs
His bold and martial character was discoverable in minute circumstances
like these. Eating in the king's presence a dish of milk, the king asked
him why he ate so much child's meat. "Sir, it is also man's meat," Henry
replied; and immediately after having fed heartily on a partridge, the
king observed that that meat would make him a coward, according to the
prevalent notions of the age respecting diet; to which the young prince
replied, "though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a
coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have
sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, "The one I use as a rapier
and the other as a dagger!"
Adam Newton appears to have filled his office as preceptor with no
servility to the capricious fancies of the princely boy. Desirous,
however, of cherishing the generous spirit and playful humour of Henry,
his tutor encouraged a freedom of jesting with him, which appears to
have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the
side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil
held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his
temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the
preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the prince in
heroic exercises, one day practised the pike, and tossing it with such
little skill as to have failed in the attempt, the young prince telling
him of his failure, Newton obviously lost his temper, observing, that
"to find fault was an evil humour." "Master, I take the humour of you."
"It becomes not a prince," observed Newton. "Then," retorted the young
prince, "doth it worse become a prince's master!" Some of these harmless
bickerings are amusing. When his tutor, playing at shuffle-board with
the prince, blamed him for changing so often, and taking up a piece,
threw it on the board, and missed his aim, the prince smilingly
exclaimed, "Well thrown, master;" on which the tutor, a little vexed,
said "he would not strive with a prince at shuffle-board." Henry
observed, "Yet you gownsmen should be best at such exercises, which are
not meet for men who are more stirring." The tutor, a little irritated,
said, "I am meet for whipping of boys." "You vaunt, then," retorted the
prince, "that which a ploughman or cart-driver can do better than you."
"I can do more," said the tutor, "for I can govern foolish children." On
which the prince, who, in his respect for his tutor, did not care to
carry the jest farther, rose from the table, and in a low voice to those
near him said, "he had need be a wise man that could do that." Newton
was sometimes severe in his chastisement; for when the prince was
playing at goff, and having warned his tutor, who was standing by in
conversation, that he was going to strike the ball, and having lifted up
the goff-club, some one observing, "Beware, sir, that you hit not Mr.
Newton!" the prince drew back the club, but smilingly observed, "Had I
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