hrunk, and not from old age
only?

And must I make one more confession? It is well known that George the
Fourth described the battle of Waterloo so often that at last he
persuaded himself that he had been present, in fact that he had won
that battle. I also remember Dr. Routh, the venerable president of
Magdalen College, who died in his hundredth year, and who had so often
repeated all the circumstances of the execution of Charles I, that
when Macaulay expressed a wish to see him, he declined "because that
young man has given quite a wrong account of the last moments of the
king," which he then proceeded to relate, as if he had been an
eye-witness throughout.

Are we not liable to the same hallucination, though, let us hope, in a
more mitigated form? Have we never told a story as if it were our
own, not from any wish to deceive, but simply because it seemed
shorter and easier to do so than to explain step by step how it
reached us? And after doing that once or twice, is there not great
danger of our being surprised at somebody else claiming the story as
his own, or actually maintaining that it was he who told it to us?

Not very long ago I remember reading in a journal a story of the Duke
of Wellington. His servant had been sent before to order dinner for
him at an out-of-the-way hotel, and in order to impress the landlord
with the dignity of his coming guest, he had recited a number of the
Duke's titles, which were very numerous. The landlord, thinking that
the Duke of Vittoria, the Prince of Waterloo, the Marquis of Torres
Vedras, and all the rest, were friends invited to dine with the Duke
of Wellington, ordered accordingly a very sumptuous banquet to the
great dismay of the real Duke. This may or may not be a very old and a
very true story; all I know is that much the same thing was told at
Oxford of Dr. Bull, who was Canon of Christ Church, Canon of Exeter,
Prebendary of York, Vicar of Staverton, and lastly, the Rev. Dr. Bull
himself. Dinner was provided for each of these persons, and we are
told that the reverend pluralist had to eat all the dishes on the
table and pay for them. This also may have been no more than one of
the many "Common-roomers" which abounded in Oxford when Common Rooms
were more frequented than they are now. But what I happen to know as a
fact is that Dean Stanley received no less than four invitations to a
hall at Blenheim, addressed A. P. Stanley, Esq., the Rev. A. P.
Stanley, Canon Stan