Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/398

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MALONIANA.
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much; but there was a chance at least of having some few anecdotes from him. He told me however but one worth recording. He married my father to Miss Collier at Greenwich in 1736. Old Mr. Collier was a very vain man who had made his fortune in the South Sea year, and having been originally a merchant, was very fond after he had retired to live upon his fortune, of a great deal of display and parade. (Here is told the story of the wedding already given.)

His story is a curious trait of the manners of the times. For I suppose the whim only of an individual was answerable for the excess in numbers; and that it was common for the party at a wedding-dinner to visit the bride and bridegroom in bed. Taylor, nearly the same age with my father who if he were living would be eighty-three, remembered my grandfather, Richard Malone, very well, but could give no discriminative account of him. He had never heard him plead. He resembled he said his third son, Richard, more than his other sons; a tall, black, handsome man, with much dignity in his appearance.

Dr. Taylor remembered Swift very well; the print done for him in Ireland (a mezzotinto) he thought very like. The only anecdote he mentioned of the Dean was, that a very well-dressed man having come to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on a Sunday, and being seated in one of the vacant stalls during the time of service bowed frequently to different persons in the church. When Swift came out he called the verger, and desired him never to permit that person