r), a poor man begged him to give him a penny. 'A penny!'
said Mr. Hill; 'what dost say to ten pounds?'--'Ah! ten pounds,' said
the beggar; 'that would make a man happy.' Mr. Hill gave him
immediately ten pounds, and putt it downe upon account. Item, _to a
beggar ten pounds to make him happy_!"--The point of this story has been
marred in the telling: it was drawn up from the following letter by
Aubrey to A. Wood, dated July 15, 1689. "A poor man asked Mr. Hill, his
lordship's steward, once to give him sixpence, or a shilling, for an
alms. 'What dost say, if I give thee ten pounds?' 'Ten pounds! _that
would make a man of me_!' Hill gave it him, and put down in his account,
'L10 _for making a man_,' which his lordship inquiring about for the
oddness of the expression, not only allowed, but was pleased with it."

This philosophical humorist was the steward of Edward Vere, Earl of
Oxford, in the reign of Elizabeth. This peer was a person of elegant
accomplishments; and Lord Orford, in his "Noble Authors," has given a
higher character of him than perhaps he may deserve. He was of the
highest rank, in great favour with the queen, and, in the style of the
day, when all our fashions and our poetry were moulding themselves on
the Italian model, he was the "Mirrour of Tuscanismo;" and, in a word,
this coxcombical peer, after seven years' residence in Florence,
returned highly "Italianated." The ludicrous motive of this
peregrination is given in the present manuscript account. Haughty of his
descent and alliance, irritable with effeminate delicacy and personal
vanity, a little circumstance, almost too minute to be recorded,
inflicted such an injury on his pride, that in his mind it required
years of absence from the court of England ere it could be forgotten.
Once making a low obeisance to the queen, before the whole court, this
stately and inflated peer suffered a mischance, which has happened, it
is said, on a like occasion--it was "light as air!" But this accident so
sensibly hurt his mawkish delicacy, and so humbled his aristocratic
dignity, that he could not raise his eyes on his royal mistress. He
resolved from that day to "be a banished man," and resided for seven
years in Italy, living in more grandeur at Florence than the Grand Duke
of Tuscany. He spent in those years forty thousand pounds. On his return
he presented the queen with embroidered gloves and perfumes, then for
the first time introduced into England, as Stowe h