one occasion at all events, how
capable it was of translating itself into the highest form of literary
art. A favorite amusement of his was making translations from Horace.
Among the passages which had specially provoked this enterprise was one
the Latin of which is so terse and pungent that it has often been
pronounced untranslatable. It is the passage in which Horace describes
true happiness as that of the man who, looking back from to-morrow, is
able to say, "I was really alive all yesterday." Dryden's pithy version
of it is to the effect that the sole true happiness is that of the man:

Who, secure at eve, can say,
"To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day."

The duke's version was on a yet higher level than this, embodying in it
a concentrated pungency and a _curiosa felicitas_ which were quite in
the vein of Horace, but contain a thought not present in the original.
They were comprised in these few words:

Happy if only I enjoy
My rival's envy for a day.

It is true this specimen of the duke's wit in literature does not bear
directly on the question of wit in social conversation; and yet it may
lead the mind to questions which are very closely akin to it. The
felicity of the duke's translation has a very close resemblance to the
_curiosa felicitas_ of Pope--for instance, in his "Characters of Women"
and his celebrated satire on Addison. Nearly all Pope's satires are
addressed, if not to a small society, yet at all events to a small
public, and outside that limited body they would have neither vogue nor
meaning.

CHAPTER VII

VIGNETTES OF LONDON LIFE

Byron's Grandson and Shelley's Son--The World of Balls--The
"Great Houses," and Their New Rivals--The Latter Criticized by
Some Ladies of the Old Noblesse--Types of More Serious
Society--Lady Marian Alford and Others--_Salons_ Exclusive and
Inclusive--A Clash of Two Rival Poets--The Poet Laureate
--Auberon Herbert and the Simple Life--Dean Stanley--Whyte
Melville--"Ouida"--"Violet Fane"--Catholic Society--Lord
Bute--Banquet to Cardinal Manning--Difficulties of the
Memoir-writer--Lord Wemyss and Lady P---- --Indiscretions of
Augustus Hare--Routine of a London Day--The Author's Life Out
of London

The few portraits and anecdotes which I have just sketched or recorded
are sufficient, let me say once more, to illustrate two general facts.
They indicate the way in which socie