English literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- Anecdotes; Litterateurs
done so, I had but paid my debts." At another time, when he was amusing
himself with the sports of a child, his tutor wishing to draw him to
more manly exercises, amongst other things, said to him in good humour,
"God send you a wise wife!" "That she may govern you and me!" said the
prince. The tutor observed, that "he had one of his own;" the prince
replied, "But mine, if I have one, would govern your wife, and by that
means would govern both you and me!" Henry, at this early age, excelled
in a quickness of reply, combined with reflection, which marks the
precocity of his intellect. His tutor having laid a wager with the
prince that he could not refrain from standing with his back to the
fire, and seeing him forget himself once or twice, standing in that
posture, the tutor said, "Sir, the wager is won, you have failed twice."
"Master," replied Henry, "Saint Peter's cock crew thrice."--A musician
having played a voluntary in his presence, was requested to play the
same again. "I could not for the kingdom of Spain," said the musician,
"for this were harder than for a preacher to repeat word by word a
sermon that he had not learned by rote." A clergyman standing by,
observed that he thought a preacher might do that: "Perhaps," rejoined
the young prince, "for a bishopric!"
The natural facetiousness of his temper appears frequently in the good
humour with which the little prince was accustomed to treat his
domestics. He had two of opposite characters, who were frequently set by
the ears for the sake of the sport; the one, Murray, nicknamed "the
tailor," loved his liquor; and the other was a stout "trencherman." The
king desired the prince to put an end to these broils, and to make the
men agree, and that the agreement should be written and subscribed by
both. "Then," said the prince, "must the drunken tailor subscribe it
with chalk, for he cannot write his name, and then I will make them
agree upon this condition--that the trencherman shall go into the
cellar, and drink with Will Murray, and Will Murray shall make a great
wallet for the trencherman to carry his victuals in."--One of his
servants having cut the prince's finger, and sucked out the blood with
his mouth, that it might heal the more easily, the young prince, who
expressed no displeasure at the accident, said to him pleasantly, "If,
which God forbid! my father, myself, and the rest of his kindred should
fail, you might claim the crown, for you have now in you the
blood-royal."--Our little prince once resolved on a hearty game of play,
and for this purpose only admitted his young gentlemen, and excluded the
men: it happened that an old servant, not aware of the injunction,
entered the apartment, on which the prince told him he might play too;
and when the prince was asked why he admitted this old man rather than
the other men, he rejoined, "Because he had a right to be of their
number, for _Senex bis puer_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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