itself to any given or stolen quantity of food; a great aptitude for
strong liquors; a considerable skill in singing chansons de table of
not the most delicate kind; he was a lover of jokes, of which he
made many, and passably bad; when pleased, simply coarse,
boisterous, and jovial; when angry, a perfect demon: bullying,
cursing, storming, fighting, as is sometimes the wont with gentlemen
of his cloth and education.

Mr. Brock was strictly, what the Marquis of Rodil styled himself in
a proclamation to his soldiers after running away, a hijo de la
guerra--a child of war. Not seven cities, but one or two regiments,
might contend for the honour of giving him birth; for his mother,
whose name he took, had acted as camp-follower to a Royalist
regiment; had then obeyed the Parliamentarians; died in Scotland
when Monk was commanding in that country; and the first appearance
of Mr. Brock in a public capacity displayed him as a fifer in the
General's own regiment of Coldstreamers, when they marched from
Scotland to London, and from a republic at once into a monarchy.
Since that period, Brock had been always with the army, he had had,
too, some promotion, for he spake of having a command at the battle
of the Boyne; though probably (as he never mentioned the fact) upon
the losing side. The very year before this narrative commences, he
had been one of Mordaunt's forlorn hope at Schellenberg, for which
service he was promised a pair of colours; he lost them, however,
and was almost shot (but fate did not ordain that his career should
close in that way) for drunkenness and insubordination immediately
after the battle; but having in some measure reinstated himself by a
display of much gallantry at Blenheim, it was found advisable to
send him to England for the purposes of recruiting, and remove him
altogether from the regiment where his gallantry only rendered the