By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary Subjects

‘But this we all knewThat a Scotchman can do —Make a small piece of metal go awfully far.’

Then there was Lord Eldon, whose nearness was proverbial, and whose unwillingness to spend displayed itself markedly in his commissariat department. An anonymous epigram professed to record an ‘Inquest Extraordinary’:

‘Found dead, a rat – no case could sure be harder:Verdict – Confined a week in Eldon’s larder.’

We are also told that, when Eldon and Sir Arthur Pigott quarrelled over the proper pronunciation of the legal term ‘lien’ – the former calling it ‘lion,’ and the latter ‘lean’ – Jekyll produced the following:

‘Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you meanBy saying the Chancellor’s lion is lean?D’ye think that his kitchen’s so bad as all that,That nothing within it can ever get fat?’

Of Lord Kenyon, another judge of like inhospitable tendencies, someone said that in his house it was always Lent in the kitchen and Passion Week in the parlour. On another occasion it was remarked that ‘in his lordship’s kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;’ to which Jekyll, pretending to be angry, replied, ‘Spits! in the name of common-sense, don’t talk about his spits – for nothing turns on them!’ When his lordship died, the words ‘Mors Janua Vita

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