2/! 4 anecdotes of Peter the Great. April 1 2, 



Lord St Helens, then envoy extraordinary at this 

 -court, paying him a compliment on his Englilh, he 

 leplied, " That he had spoke it better, but it was 

 some time since he learned it.'\ This some time we 

 discovered to have been in the year 1691 when he 

 made his voyage to Britain. 



Anecdotes of Peter THE GREAT related by the 

 Commodore. 

 It is well known that Peter regarded his own sub- 

 jects as grown children, and frequently corrected 

 them with his own hand as such, in the patriarchal 

 stile, which still exists in Rufsia, where a father 

 corrects his children of all ages, if he thinks proper. 

 It is also pofsible that the point of honour at that pe- 

 riod was not as yet sufficiently establifhed, to make 

 other punifliments as effectual, as in some countries 

 where the chivalry of the middle ages had introdu- 

 ced iV, and where a reprimand is worse than death to 

 an officer. 



At the siege of Derbent, where the commodore 

 attended, some transports, with military stores, ne- 

 cefsary to the attack, long waited for with impa- 

 tience, arrived at last under the care of a prince, 

 who, thinking the danger of the seas over, came to 

 an anchor, (pofsibly in a carelefs manner) till mor- 

 ning, when he was to bring them in and land his 

 cargo. But a cruel storm wrecked the emperor's 

 present hopes during the night on the coast, which 

 was found next morning covered with the so much 

 wanted stores, and threw him into one of those fit^ 

 of pafsion to which he was occasionally subject, and 



