It is when I
stick to my apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not when I
depart from it. I therefore must beg your Lordship's pardon for again
resuming it after this very short digression,--assuring you that I shall
never altogether lose sight of such matter as persons abler than I am
may turn to some profit.
The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention
of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers
as excessive and out of all bounds.
I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his
Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a
sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as
dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and
incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to
_me_, but took the subject-matter from the crown grants _to his own
family_. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way
of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The
grants to the House of Russell were so enormous as not only to outrage
economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his
unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.
Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a
creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very
spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin,
and covers me all over with the spray, everything of him and about him
is from the throne.
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