THE COUNTY BRIDGE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1
SIR,—Allow me to make your peace with Mr. Brown ; there is no occasion for apology or retractation. The couplet probably is a hundred years old. I have quoted it myself for about fifty, but not as it was quoted in the House of Commons.
Though I have not seen the book since I was a boy, I can trust my memory to say that "Pennant's Tour in North Wales" contains a notice of a bridge bearing this inscription
Amersham Fludyer, of his great bounty,
Built this bridge here,—at the expense of the county."
If the Welsh Member had any malice in substituting a name which spoils the verse, his shaft was doubtless shot at Bishop Browne, whose surrender of Winchester House was the subject of his sneer. In that case, as was said of a learned Judge, he tried a joke and reserved the point, for neither the House nor the Bishop found it out.
The Liverpool wags seem to have been keener-sighted ; but it was more likely a blunder, due to Johnson's comprehensive excuse,—" pure ignorance." The House of Commons no longer quotes as it did in my young days, when George III. was King.
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