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poet, and advanced liim, through all the gradations of the law, till 

 he died Lord Chief Justice of England. Bishop Williams was 

 raised to the mitre for his political abilities ; but owed his first step 

 to his colloquial talents. His chaplain. Dr. Racket, who was also 

 chaplain to the king, says, " The king's table was a trial of wits. 

 The reading of some book before him was very frequent, while he 

 was at his repast. He collected knowledge by a variety of ques- 

 tions. He was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which 

 he would wind and turn about, with the most stabbing objec- 

 tions that I ever heard ; and was as pleasant and fellow-like in all 

 these discourses as with his huntsman in the field. They that, in 

 many such genial and convivial conferences, were ripe and weighty 

 in their answers, were indubiously designed to some place of credit 

 and profit." He was irritable, but placable ; witty, but never 

 laughed at his own jokes, and was delighted with wit in others. — 

 There is an anecdote preserved, which illustrates all these points at 

 once. While a very abusive satire was reading to him, he often 

 said, that if there were no more men in England, the rogue should 

 hang for it : but at the concluding couplet 



Now God preserve the King, the Queen, the Peers, 

 And grant, the writer long may wear his ears, 



he burst into a fit of laughter, and said : " By my soul thou shalt 

 for me : thou art a bitter, but thou art a witty knave." In general, 

 he has the credit of encouraging genius at home and abroad. 



Arthur Wilson has recorded another instance of irritability, fol- 

 lowed by an extreme delicacy of feeling and remorse. Having 

 once treated an old servant with indignity in a fit of passion, about 

 some important papers that had been mislaid, the servant, then a 

 gentleman of his bedchamber, was so indignant, that he told the 



VOL. XV. M M 



