d daughter, had a most extraordinary habit of crediting
their friends with their own wise and witty sayings; thus Mrs. Montagu
and Mrs. Procter would say, "Ah yes, you know, as you once said," and
then would follow something so sparkling, profound, concise, incisive,
and brilliant, that you remained, eyes and mouth open, gasping in
speechless astonishment at the merit of the saying you never said (and
couldn't have said if your life had depended on it), and the
magnificence of the gift its author was making you. The princes in the
Arabian Nights, who only gave you a ring worth thousands of sequins,
were shabby fellows compared with these ladies, who declared that the
diamonds and rubies of their own uttering had fallen from your lips.
Persons who lay claim to the good things of others are not rare; those
who do not only disclaim their own, but even credit others with them,
are among the very rarest. In all my intercourse with the inhabitants of
_two_ worlds, I have known no similar instance of self-denial; and
reflecting upon it, I have finally concluded that it was too superhuman
to be a real virtue, and could proceed only from an exorbitant
superabundance of natural gift, which made its possessors reckless,
extravagant, and even unprincipled in the use of their wealth; they had
wit enough for themselves, and to spare for all their friends, and these
were many.

At an evening party at Mrs. Montagu's, in Bedford Square, in 1828, I
first saw Mrs. Jameson. The Ennuyee, one is given to understand, dies;
and it was a little vexatious to behold her sitting on a sofa, in a very
becoming state of blooming _plumptitude_; but it was some compensation
to be introduced to her. And so began a close and friendly intimacy,
which lasted for many years, between myself and this very accomplished
woman. She was the daughter of an Irish miniature-painter of the name of
Murphy, and began life as a governess, in which capacity she educated
the daughters of Lord H----, and went to Italy with the family of Mrs.
R----. When I first knew her she had not long been married to Mr. Robert
Jameson, a union so ill-assorted that it restored Mrs. Jameson to the
bosom of her own family, to whom her conjugal ill-fortune proved a
blessing, for never did daughter and sister discharge with more loving
fidelity the duties of those relationships. Her life was devoted to her
parents while they lived, and after their death to her sisters and a
young niece whom