opinion but mine. I regret that Lord Lewis Duras should not be here. I
should like to insult him. My lords, it is Fermain Clancharlie who has
been the peer, and you who have been the mountebanks. As to his laugh,
it is not his fault. You have laughed at that laugh; men should not
laugh at misfortune. If you think that people cannot laugh at you as
well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed.
My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous--a
duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like
to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few
speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms
at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on
the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at
Gonville and Caius. Here I am; and I choose to stare you in the face.
You have just been impudent to this new peer. A monster, certainly; but
a monster given up to beasts. I had rather be that man than you. I was
present at the sitting, in my place as a possible heir to a peerage. I
heard all. I have not the right to speak; but I have the right to be a
gentleman. Your jeering airs annoyed me. When I am angry I would go up
to Mount Pendlehill, and pick the cloudberry which brings the
thunderbolt down on the gatherer. That is the reason why I have waited
for you at the door. We must have a few words, for we have arrangements
to make. Did it strike you that you failed a little in respect towards
myself? My lords, I entertain a firm determination to kill a few of you.
All you who are here--Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet; Savage, Earl
Rivers; Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland; Laurence Hyde, Earl of
Rochester; you Barons, Gray of Rolleston, Cary Hunsdon, Escrick,
Rockingham, little Carteret; Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness; William,
Viscount Hutton; and Ralph, Duke of Montagu; and any who choose--I,
David Dirry-Moir, an officer of the fleet, summon, call, and command you
to provide yourselves, in all haste, with seconds and umpires, and I
will meet you face to face and hand to hand, to-night, at once,
to-morrow, by day or night, by sunlight or by candlelight, where, when,
or how you please, so long as there is two sword-lengths' space; and you
will do well to look to the flints of your pistols and the edges of your
rapiers, for it is my firm intention to cause vacancies in your
peerages.--Ogle Cav