"No. I do not feel attracted to them. I
remember the author, and he was the most conceited person with whom I
have ever been brought in contact, although I have read Cicero and known
Bulwer Lytton." This three-edged compliment has seldom been excelled. In
a lighter style, and more accordant with feminine grace, was Lady
Morley's comment on the decaying charms of her famous rival, Lady
Jersey--the Zenobia of _Endymion_--of whom some gushing admirer had said
that she looked so splendid going to court in her mourning array of
black and diamonds--"it was like night." "Yes, my dear; _minuit passe_."
A masculine analogue to this amiable compliment may be cited from the
table-talk of Lord Granville--certainly not an unkindly man--to whom the
late Mr. Delane had been complaining of the difficulty of finding a
suitable wedding-present for a young lady of the house of Rothschild.
"It would be absurd to give a Rothschild a costly gift. I should like to
find something not intrinsically valuable, but interesting because it is
rare." "Nothing easier, my dear fellow; send her a lock of your hair."

When a remote cousin of Lord Henniker was elected to the Head Mastership
of Rossall, a disappointed competitor said that it was a case of [Greek:
eneka tou kuriou]; but a Greek joke is scarcely fair play.

When the _New Review_ was started, its accomplished Editor designed it
to be an inexpensive copy of the _Nineteenth Century_. It was to cost
only sixpence, and was to be written by bearers of famous names--those
of the British aristocracy for choice. He was complaining in society of
the difficulty of finding a suitable title, when a vivacious lady said,
"We have got _Cornhill_, and _Ludgate_, and _Strand_--why not call yours
_Cheapside_?"

Oxford has always been a nursing-mother of polished satirists. Of a
small sprig of aristocracy, who was an undergraduate in my time, it was
said by a friend that he was like Euclid's definition of a point: he had
no parts and no magnitude, but had position. In previous chapters I have
quoted the late Master of Balliol and Lord Sherbrooke. Professor Thorold
Rogers excelled in a Shandean vein. Lord Bowen is immortalized by his
emendation to the Judge's address to the Queen, which had contained the
Heep-like sentence--"Conscious as we are of our own unworthiness for the
great office to which we have been called." "Wouldn't it be better to
say, 'Conscious as we are of one another's unworthiness'?" Henry S