"_Multa renascentur_," _&c._--To show how stories are made standing
dishes with what we may call _current sauce_ (no pun intended), take the
following:--If we believe anything to have happened in our own day, that
is, in Liverpool or Castlereagh time, it is the anecdote of the
borough-monger who would answer nothing to the excuses of the minister,
except "There are five of us." This story was told as an old one in the
_Telegraph_ in 1798; and a long dialogue was given between Lord
Falmouth, who wanted the Captaincy of the Yeomen of the Guard, and Henry
Pelham, who had promised it elsewhere. To all the poor minister could
say, the peer could only answer, "There are _seven_ of us." I hope that,
in an age when coincidences are sought for, Wordsworth will not be
suspected of plagiarism.
Again, what reader of gossip does not know that when George III. went to
Weymouth, the Mayor, in making his address, mistook the private
directions of his prompter for parts of his address, and gave it the
King as follows:--"Hold up your head, and look like a man--what the ----
do you mean?... By ----, Sir, you'll ruin us all." This story was told
in a newspaper in 1797, as having happened between James II. and the
Mayor of Winchester.
In the _Monthly Magazine_ in 1798, is a paper on peculiarities of
expression, among which are several which we flatter ourselves belong to
our own time. For instance, "to _cut_ a person," which was then current:
some tried to change it into _spear_, but failed. Also, to _vote_, as in
"he voted it a bad lounge;" and the words _bore_, _done up_, _dished_,
&c.; not forgetting _spilt_ for "upset" in a carriage.
The parliamentary phrases of "catching the speaker's eye," "being upon
his legs," "meeting the ideas of the house," "committing himself,"
"taking shame to himself," "being free to confess," "putting a question
roundly," "answering it fairly," "pushing an investigation," are all
noted as then worthy of remark. And, if we are to trust the article
cited, the word _truism_ was born and bred in the House of Commons, in
the sense of a forcible and undeniable truth. And the same origin is
given to the idiom "in my own mind" as in "I feel no doubt, in my own
mind,..."