skill in questions of commerce above other men.

Of his behaviour in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get
much intelligence. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has
been related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper.
During his embassy he sat at the opera by a man who, in his rapture,
accompanied with his own voice the principal singer.

Prior fell to railing at the performer with all the terms of
reproach that he could collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his
song, began to expostulate with him for his harsh censure of a man
who was confessedly the ornament of the stage. "I know all that,"
says the ambassador, "mais il chante si haut, que je ne scaurois
vous entendre."

In a gay French company, where every one sang a little song or
stanza, of which the burden was "Bannissons la Melancolie," when it
came to his turn to sing, after the performance of a young lady that
sat next him, he produced these extemporary lines


"Mais cette voix, et ces beaux yeux,
Font Cupidon trop dangereux,
Et je suis triste quand je crie
Bannissons la Melancolie."


Tradition represents him as willing to descend from the dignity of
the poet and statesman to the low delights of mean company. His
Chloe probably was sometimes ideal: but the woman with whom he