translation, and this practise was
kept up daily from the time the boy was eight years old until he was
nineteen, when his father died.

Then there was the tutor Pretyman who must not be left out. He was a
combination valet and teacher, and the most pedantic and idolatrous
person that ever moused through dusty tomes. With a trifle more adipose
and a little less intellect, he would have made a most successful and
awful butler. He seemed a type of the English waiter who by some chance
had acquired a college education, and never said a wrong thing, nor did
a right one, during his whole life.

Pretyman wrote a life of Pitt, and according to Macaulay it enjoys the
distinction of being the worst biography ever written. Lord Rosebery,
however, declares the book is not so bad as it might be. I believe there
are two other biographies equally stupid: Weems' "Life of Washington,"
and the book on Gainsborough, by Thicknesse. Weems' book was written to
elevate his man into a demigod; Thicknesse was intent on lowering his
subject and exalting himself; while Pretyman extols himself and his
subject equally, revealing how William Pitt could never have been
William Pitt were it not for his tutor. Pretyman emphasizes trifles,
slights important matters, and waxes learned concerning the irrelevant.

A legacy coming to Pretyman, he changed his name to Tomline, as women
change their names when they marry or enter a convent.

Religion to Pitt was quite a perfunctory affair, necessary, of course;
but a bishop in England was one who could do little good and,
fortunately, not much harm. With an irony too subtle to be seen by but
very few, Pitt when twenty-seven years of age made his old tutor Bishop
of Winchester. Tomline proved an excellent and praiseworthy bishop; and
his obsequious loyalty to Pitt led to the promise that if the Primacy
should become vacant, Tomline was to be made Archbishop of Canterbury.

This promise was told by the unthinking Tomline, and reached the ears of
George the Third, a man who at times was very much alert.

There came a day when the Primacy was vacant, and to head off the
nomination by Pitt, the King one morning at eight o'clock walked over to
the residence of Bishop Manners Somers and plied the knocker.

The servant who answered the summons explained that the Bishop was
taking his bath and could not be seen until he had had breakfast.

But the visitor was importunate.

The servant went back to his master