Of all Quin's jests, there is nothing finer than two which elicited the warm approval of Horace Walpole. Bishop Warburton, in company at Bath, spoke in support of prerogative. Quin said, "Pray, my Lord, spare me; you are not acquainted with my principles. I am a republican; and, perhaps, I even think that the execution of Charles I. might be justified." "Ay!" said Warburton, "by what law?" Quin replied: "By all the laws he had left them." Walpole saw the sum of the whole controversy couched in those eight monosyllables; and the more he examined the sententious truth the finer he found it. The Bishop thought otherwise, and "would have got off upon judgments." He bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends,--a lie, but no matter. "I would not advise your Lordship," said Quin, "to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken, that was the case of the twelve apostles." Archbishop Whately could not have more logically overthrown conclusions which discern God's anger in individual afflictions. There is little wonder, then, that Warburton disliked Quin; indeed there was not much love lost between the two men, who frequently met as guests in the house of Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, Bath,--the original of Fielding's Squire Allworthy, and the uncle (Walpole says the father) of Warburton's wife. The Bishop, seldom courteous to any man, treated Quin with an offensively patronising air, and endeavoured to make him feel the distance between them. There was only a difference in their vocations, for Quin, by birth, was, perhaps, rather a better gentleman than Warburton. The latter once, at Allen's house, where the prelate is said to have admonished the player on his too luxurious way of living (the bishop, however, loving custard not less than the actor did John Dory), requested him, as he could not see him on the stage, to recite some passages from dramatic authors, in presence of a large company then assembled in the drawing-room. Quin made some little difficulty; but after a well-simulated hesitation consented, and stood up to deliver passages from "Venice Preserved;" but in reciting the lines "Honest men Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves Repose and fatten,"