[19] Mrs. Ingoldsby, who is deeply read in Robertson, informs me that this is a mistake; that the lady to whom this memorable billet was delivered by the hands of Pennalosa, was the unfortunate monarch's mamma, and not his sister. I would gladly rectify the error, but, then,—what am I to do for a rhyme?—On the whole, I fear I must content myself, like Talleyrand, with admitting that "it is worse than a fault—it's a blunder!" for which enormity,—as honest old Pepys says when he records having kissed his cookmaid,—"I humbly beg pardon of Heaven, and Mrs. Ingoldsby!"
[21] "Tompion's, I presume?"—Farquhar.
The next in order of these "lays of many lands" refers to a period far earlier in point of date, and has for its scene the banks of what our Teutonic friends are wont to call their "own imperial River!" The incidents which it records afford sufficient proof (and these are days of demonstration), that a propensity to flirtation is not confined to age or country, and that its consequences were not less disastrous to the mail-clad Ritter of the dark ages than to the silken courtier of the seventeenth century. The whole narrative bears about it the stamp of truth, and from the papers among which it was discovered I am inclined to think it must have been picked up by Sir Peregrine in the course of one of his valetudinary visits to "The German Spa."