"was easily accounted for—his discourse was his own, his actions were his ministry's."[1]
A good story of the King and the Lord Mayor of London at a Guildhall dinner has been preserved to us in the Spectator. The King's easy manner, and Sir Robert Viner's due sense of city hospitality, carried the dignitary of Guildhall into certain familiarities not altogether graceful at any time, and quite out of character at a public table. The King, who understood very well how to extricate himself from difficulties of this description, gave a hint to the company to avoid ceremony, and stole off to his coach, which stood ready for him in Guildhall Yard. But the Mayor liked his Majesty's company too well, and was grown so intimate that he pursued the merry sovereign, and, catching him fast by the hand, cried out with a vehement oath and accent, "Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle." "The airy monarch," continues the narrator of the anecdote, "looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time and do now), repeated this line of the old song:
He that's drunk is as great as a king,[2]
