Mr. Balfour was entertained by the Grocers' Company on Wednesday,
and made a very amusing speech, in which he commented on the wealth of metaphor in Sir W. Harcourt's letter to Monday's Times, comparing the House of Commons to a horse, a ship, a woman, and a fish, and Mr. W. H. Smith to a clumsy jockey, a lubberly steersman, an ungainly lover, and a raw angler. Sir W. Harcourt, he said, almost made him wish that the triumph Sir William so ostentatiously expects would come at once, in order that he might enjoy the spectacle of Sir W. Harcourt showing Mr. Smith how rude and brutal his methods had been, how the horse ought to be ridden with due regard• to the tenderness of its mouth, how the ship ought to be steered, how the fish ought to be played, and, above all, how the woman ought to be courted. "Since the days of Poly- phemus and Galatea," said Mr. Balfour, " I should say that such a lover had not been seen on this sublunary stage." Certainly Sir William Harcourt ogling the House of Com- mons, and addressing it as Polyphemus addresses Galatea,— " 0 ruddier than the cherry ! 0 sweeter than the berry ! 0 far more bright than moonshine light, Like kidlings blithe and merry," —or in some political paraphrase of these endearing words, is indeed a very happy conception of Mr. Balfour's.
Previous page
