"The man that is Drunke is as good as a King!"
and sat again. He never became, as his tutor, the loyal Duke of Newcastle, feared, "seared with majestie."
The Lord's Anointed liked to forego his authority, and come as a mere spectator into a session of Parliament. "'Tis as good as a play," the provoking creature said. He would get down from his throne in the Lords, to stand with folded arms by the hearth, drawing a group around him, and breaking up the order and impressiveness of the place. Those really interested in statecraft, whose fond incubations he so overturned, must have found him an _enfant terrible_ to an incorrigible degree. A memorandum-book, to be seen in one of the cases at the Bodleian, lies open at a bit of scribbled correspondence between himself and his Chancellor, passed from one to the other in the middle of debate. The King's share is as wayward and roguish as Sterne could have made it.
--"I would willingly make a visite to my sister at tunbridge, for a night or two at farthest. When do you thinke I can best spare that time?"
--"I know no reason why you may not, for such a tyme (two nights) go the next weeke about Wednsday or Thursday, and return tyme enough for the adiournement, which you ought to do the weeke following. I suppose you will goe with a light Trayne."
--"I intend to take nothing but my night-bag."
--"God, you will not go without forty or fifty horses?"