Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/223

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CLUB ANECDOTES.
203

the name of a very old clergyman was called over (of whom a private complaint had been made that the parish could not endure him, he gave such bad sermons), he gravely chided the poor parson—‘I am told, Mr. ———, that your parish is very well satisfied with you in many respects, but they are much discontented with your sermons. Now there is no excuse for this; for instead of preaching extempore, as I am told you sometimes do, or giving them your own compositions, you have only to preach good printed sermons, and they will have no cause for complaint.’—‘May it please your lordship,’ replied the clergyman, ‘you have been wholly misinformed. I have been long in the habit of preaching printed sermons, and those I have preferred are your lordship’s!’

“When Burnet once rated his son, afterwards the judge, for something indecorous that he had done, ‘Lord, sir, I can’t help it; I was forced to do it for bread.’—‘Get you gone,’ replied the Bishop, ‘it was for drink.’

“Bishop Douglas, it appears, was principally concerned in issuing out the Life and Continuation of Lord Clarendon, at Oxford in 1759. He says that Lord Clarendon’s character of Monk was much stronger coloured (i.e., he was more censured by his Lordship) than appears at present. But such alterations as were made in the manuscript—which were chiefly to soften the characters—were made by Lord Clarendon’s heirs before it came to Oxford.

“Lord Onslow has from his father, all the castrated sheets of Burnet’s History. The judge pro-