would form a vanguard. And we are informed that the beginning of a
motive life with women must be in the head, equally with men (by no means
a truism when she wrote). Also that 'men do not so much fear to lose the
hearts of thoughtful women as their strict attention to their graces.'
The present market is what men are for preserving: an observation of
still reverberating force. Generally in her character of the feminine
combatant there is a turn of phrase, like a dimple near the lips showing
her knowledge that she was uttering but a tart measure of the truth. She
had always too much lambent humour to be the dupe of the passion
wherewith, as she says, 'we lash ourselves into the persuasive speech
distinguishing us from the animals.'

The instances of her drollery are rather hinted by the Diarists for the
benefit of those who had met her and could inhale the atmosphere at a
word. Drolleries, humours, reputed witticisms, are like odours of roast
meats, past with the picking of the joint. Idea is the only vital
breath. They have it rarely, or it eludes the chronicler. To say of the
great erratic and forsaken Lady A****, after she had accepted the
consolations of Bacchus, that her name was properly signified in
asterisks 'as she was now nightly an Ariadne in heaven through her God,'
sounds to us a roundabout, with wit somewhere and fun nowhere. Sitting
at the roast we might have thought differently. Perry Wilkinson is not
happier in citing her reply to his compliment on the reviewers' unanimous
eulogy of her humour and pathos:--the 'merry clown and poor pantaloon
demanded of us in every work of fiction,' she says, lamenting the
writer's compulsion to go on producing them for applause until it is
extremest age that knocks their knees. We are informed by Lady Pennon of
'the most amusing description of the first impressions of a pretty
English simpleton in Paris'; and here is an opportunity for ludicrous
contrast of the French and English styles of pushing flatteries--'piping