Penelope, Volume III by William Pitt Scargill

Wise kings choose wise ministers. Lord Spoonbill little thought what a clumsy negociator he had selected in the person of Colonel Crop. His lordship had not discernment enough to see that the Colonel was a prodigious blockhead, and even when, as above recorded, the gallant officer substituted in his narration the name of Arabella for that of Penelope, neither the employed nor the employer had any suspicion that there might be any error in the apprehension, or any mistake as to the person sought.

It might also appear to some persons strange, that so great and so sudden an alteration should have taken place in the mind of Miss Primrose. But Lord Spoonbill had never rightly appreciated that young lady's character and disposition. For notwithstanding that Penelope was a person of high spirit and great constitutional vivacity, there was nothing in the temperament of her mind bordering on what is called the satirical. She was not one of those half knowing ones, who are ambitious of shewing their understanding by ridiculing the rest of the world as fools. Indeed, whenever she did encounter a blockhead, and that was not unfrequent, she made it rather a rule to treat him with much consideration and tenderness of manner, knowing that no man would voluntarily choose to be a booby.