placed them in attractive lights; and her mind has been well likened to a kaleidoscope which, whenever its glittering and heterogeneous contents are moved or shaken, surprises by some 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 lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying:  sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense or the affinity of their sound.”  If this be so, she possessed it in abundance.  In a letter, dated Bath, 26th April, 1818,—­about the time when Talleyrand said of Lady F.S.’s robe:  “Elle commence trop tard et finit trop tot,”—­she writes: