e new combination of colour or of form. She professed to write
as she talked; but her conversation was doubtless better than her
books: her main advantages being a well-stored memory, fertility of
images, aptness of allusion, and _apropos_.

Her colloquial excellence and her agreeability are established by the
unanimous testimony of her cotemporaries. Her fame in this respect
rests on the same basis as that of all great wits, all great actors,
and many great orators. To question it for want of more tangible and
durable proofs, would be as unreasonable as to question Sydney
Smith's humour, Hook's powers of improvisation, Garrick's Richard, or
Sheridan's Begum speech. But _ex pede Herculem_. Marked indications
of her quality will be found in her letters and her books. "Both,"
remarks an acute and by no means partial critic[1], "are full of
happy touches, and here and there will be found in them those deep
and piercing thoughts which come intuitively to people of genius."

[Footnote 1: The Athenaeum. Jan. 26th, 1861.]

Surely these are happy touches:

"I hate a general topic as a pretty woman hates a general mourning
when black does not become her complexion."

"Life is a schoolroom, not a playground."

In allusion to the rage for scientific experiment in 1811: "Never was
poor Nature so put to the rack, and never, of course, was she made to
tell so many lies."

"Science (i.e. learning), which acted as a sceptre in the hand of
Johnson, and was used as a club by Dr. Parr, became a lady's fan,
when played with by George Henry Glasse."

"Hope is drawn with an anchor always, and Common Sense is never
strong enough to draw it up."

"The poppy which Nature sows among the corn, to shew us that sleep is
as necessary as bread." [1]

[Footnote 1: Or to shew us that the harvest diminishes with sloth,
and that what we gain in sleep we lose in bread. But _qui dort,
dine_.]

"The best writers are not the best friends; and the last character is
more to be valued than the first by cotemporaries: after fifty years,
indeed, the others carry away all the applause."

This is the reason why posterity always takes part with the famous
author or man of genius against those who witnessed his meanness or
suffered from his selfishness; why fresh apologists will constantly
be found for Bacon's want of principle and Johnson's want of manners.

In the course of his famous definition or description of wit, Barrow
says: "Sometimes it lie