his pleasure, albeit the dinner was overdone throughout.

The most finished and elegant of all _lecturers_, Thackeray often made a
very poor appearance when he attempted to deliver a set speech to a
public assembly. He frequently broke down after the first two or three
sentences. He prepared what he intended to say with great exactness, and
his favorite delusion was that he was about to astonish everybody with a
remarkable effort. It never disturbed him that he commonly made a woful
failure when he attempted speech-making, but he sat down with such cool
serenity if he found that he could not recall what he wished to say,
that his audience could not help joining in and smiling with him when he
came to a stand-still. Once he asked me to travel with him from London
to Manchester to hear a great speech he was going to make at the
founding of the Free Library Institution in that city. All the way down
he was discoursing of certain effects he intended to produce on the
Manchester dons by his eloquent appeals to their pockets. This passage
was to have great influence with the rich merchants, this one with the
clergy, and so on. He said that although Dickens and Bulwer and Sir
James Stephen, all eloquent speakers, were to precede him, he intended
to beat each of them on this special occasion. He insisted that I
should be seated directly in front of him, so that I should have the
full force of his magic eloquence. The occasion was a most brilliant
one; tickets had been in demand at unheard-of prices several weeks
before the day appointed; the great hall, then opened for the first time
to the public, was filled by an audience such as is seldom convened,
even in England. The three speeches which came before Thackeray was
called upon were admirably suited to the occasion, and most eloquently
spoken. Sir John Potter, who presided, then rose, and after some
complimentary allusions to the author of "Vanity Fair," introduced him
to the crowd, who welcomed him with ringing plaudits. As he rose, he