Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/119

Rh When told that the Emperor of Morocco had made him a present of two lions and thirty ostriches, he laughed and said, "He knew nothing more proper to send by way of return than a flock of geese."

Of Harrow Church, standing on a hill and visible for many miles round, he is said to have remarked, "that it was the only visible church he knew;" and when taken to see a fellow climb up the outside of a church to its very pinnacle and there stand on his head, he offered him, on coming down, a patent to prevent any one doing it but himself.

"Pray," he said at the theatre, while observing the grim looks of the murderers in Macbeth, "pray what is the reason that we never see a rogue in a play, but, odds fish! they always clap him on a black perriwig, when it is well known one of the greatest rogues in England always wears a fair one?" The allusion was, it is asserted, to Oates, but, as I rather suspect, to Shaftesbury. The saying, however, was told by Betterton to Cibber.

He was troubled with intercessions for people who were obnoxious to him, and once when Lord Keeper Guilford was soliciting his favour on behalf