nd (as factious reports used to run) in a very short
time, viz., that his lordship rode upon the rhinoceros, than which a
more infantine exploit could not have been fastened upon him. And most
people were struck with amazement at it, and divers ran here and there
to find out whether it was true or no. And soon after dinner some lords
and others came to his lordship to know the truth from himself, for the
setters of the lie affirmed it positively as of their own knowledge.
That did not give his lordship much disturbance, for he expected no
better from his adversaries. But that his friends, intelligent persons,
who must know him to be far from guilty of any childish levity, should
believe it, was what roiled him extremely, and much more when they had
the face to come to him to know if it were true. I never saw him in such
a rage, and to lay about him with affronts (which he keenly bestowed
upon the minor courtiers that came on that errand) as then; for he sent
them away with fleas in their ear. And he was seriously angry with his
own brother, Sir Dudley North, because he did not contradict the lie in
sudden and direct terms, but laughed as taking the question put to him
for a banter, till, by iteration, he was brought to it. For some lords
came, and because they seemed to attribute somewhat to the avowed
positiveness of the reporters, he rather chose to send for his brother
to attest than to impose his bare denial, and so it passed; and the
noble earl (of Sunderland), with Jeffries, and others of that crew, made
merry, and never blushed at the lie of their own making, but valued
themselves upon it as a very good jest."

And so it passed. What a sensation would have been caused by the sudden
apparition in that age of a few numbers of _Punch_. What a subject for a
cartoon, some John Leech of 1685 would have made of the stately Lord
Keeper on the back of a rhinoceros, and the infamous Judge Jeffries
leering at him from a window.

THE ELEPHANT AND HIS TRUNK.

Canning and another gentleman were looking at a picture of the deluge;
the ark was seen in the middle distance, while in the fore-sea an
elephant was struggling with his fate. "I wonder," said the gentleman,
"that the elephant did not secure _an inside_ place!"--"He was too late,
my friend," replied Canning; "he was detained _packing up his
trunk_."[189]

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS AND JELLY MADE OF IVORY DUST.--A VEGETARIAN TAKEN
IN.

The biographers of James Montgo