of the English middle classes is to hide their plebeian origin under a
mockery of patrician elegance. He had none of the airs of success or
reputation,--none of the affectations, either personal or social, which
are rife everywhere. He was manly and natural,--free and off-handed to the
verge of eccentricity. Independence and marked character seemed to breathe
from the little, rather bowed figure, crowned with a lion-like head and
falling light hair,--to glow in the keen, eager, blue eyes glancing on
either side as he walked along. Nothing could be less commonplace, nothing
less conventional, than his appearance in a room or in the streets.

His quick, impulsive nature made him a great talker, and conspicuously
convivial,--yea, convivial, at times, up to heights of vinous glory which
the Currans and Sheridans shrank not from, but which a respectable age
discourages. And here I must undertake the task of saying something about
his conversational wit,--so celebrated, yet so difficult (as is notoriously
the case with all wits) to do justice to on paper.

The first thing that struck you was his extreme _readiness_ in
conversation. He gave the electric spark whenever you put your knuckle to
him. The first time I called on him in his house at Putney, I found him
sipping claret. We talked of a certain dull fellow whose wealth made him
prominent at that time. "Yes," said Jerrold, drawing his finger round
the edge of his wineglass, "_that's_ the range of his intellect,--only
it had never any thing half so good in it." I quote this merely as one
of the average _bons-mots_ which made the small change of his ordinary
conversation. He would pun, too, in talk, which he scarcely ever did in
writing. Thus he extemporized as an epitaph for his friend Charles Knight,
"GOOD NIGHT!"--When Mrs. Glover complained that her hair was turning
gray,--from using essence of lavender (as she said),--he asked her "whether
it wasn't essence of thyme?" On the occasion of starting a convivial club,