a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber
who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History
ever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we see
something of France and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw
Queen Anne at the latter place tearing down the Park slopes after her
staghounds, and driving her one-horse chaise--a hot, red-faced woman, not
in the least resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon
St. Paul's, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was
neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand her
a letter or a washhand-basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the end
of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural
posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees like a
Court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of
the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather than
heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children
a much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the
_Court Gazette_ and the newspapers which we get thence.

There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke, and of
whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed in
the army, that he was eldest son of the Hereditary Grand Bootjack of the
Empire, and heir to that honour of which his ancestors had been very
proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, as
they drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old Lord
Castlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle,
though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he served (and
who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen English and
Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court
than of his ancestral honours and valued his dignity (as Lord of the
Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully
ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. He
pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for
the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and
sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother
Thomas capitulated (afterwards making terms with the Commonwealth, for
which the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother
Edward, who