s a very slight effort of the imagination to conceive this
well-born young Templar wielding his doughty pen in the Bangorian
Controversy, or declaiming on the hustings for Wilkes and Liberty;
bandying witticisms with Sheridan, and capping Latin verses with Charles
Fox; or helping to rule England as a member of that "Venetian Oligarchy"
on which Lord Beaconsfield lavished all the vials of his sarcasm. In
truth, it is not fanciful to say that whatever was best in the
eighteenth century--its robust common sense, its racy humour, its
thorough and unaffected learning, its ceremonious courtesy for great
occasions, its jolly self-abandonment in social intercourse--is
exhibited in the demeanour and conversation of Sir William Harcourt. He
is an admirable host, and, to borrow a phrase from Sydney Smith,
"receives his friends with that honest joy which warms more than dinner
or wine." As a guest, he is a splendid acquisition, always ready to
amuse and to be amused, delighting in the rapid cut-and-thrust of
personal banter, and bringing out of his treasure things new and old for
the amusement and the benefit of a later and less instructed generation.

Extracts from the private conversation of living people, as a rule, I
forbear; but some of Sir William's quotations are so extraordinarily apt
that they deserve a permanent place in the annals of table-talk. That
fine old country gentleman, the late Lord Knightley (who was the living
double of Dickens's Sir Leicester Dedlock), had been expatiating after
dinner on the undoubted glories of his famous pedigree. The company was
getting a little restive under the recitation, when Sir William was
heard to say, in an appreciative aside, "This reminds me of Addison's
evening hymn--

'And Knightley to the listening earth
Repeats the story of his birth.'"

Surely the force of apt citation can no further go. When Lord Tennyson
chanced to say in Sir William Harcourt's hearing that his pipe after
breakfast was the most enjoyable of the day, Sir William softly murmured
the Tennysonian line--

"The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds."

Some historians say that he substituted "bards" for "birds," and the
reception accorded by the poet to the parody was not as cordial as its
excellence deserved.

Another capital talker is Sir George Trevelyan. He has been, from the
necessities of his position, a man of the world and a politician, and he
is as ready as Mr. Bertie-Tremaine's guest