'Honours to one in my situation,' he says in a
letter to his brother Maurice, in January, 1770, when speaking
of his appointment as Professor of Ancient History to the Royal
Academy, 'are something like ruffles to a man that wants a
shirt' ('Percy Memoir', 1801, 87-8). His source was probably,
not Brown's 'Laconics', but those French 'ana' he knew so well.
According to M. J. J. Jusserand ('English Essays from a French
Pen', 1895, pp. 160-1), the originator of this conceit was M.
Samuel de Sorbieres, the traveller in England who was assailed
by Bishop Sprat. Considering himself inadequately rewarded by
his patrons, Mazarin, Louis XIV, and Pope Clement IX, he said
bitterly -- 'They give lace cuffs to a man without a shirt'; a
'consolatory witticism' which he afterwards remodelled into, 'I
wish they would send me bread for the butter they kindly
provided me with.' In this form it appears in the Preface to the
'Sorberiana', Toulouse, 1691.
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