ety and recreation, not "disdaining the innocent
amusement of a game at cards." And this plan of a happy life he very
fairly realised in his little house in Bentinck Street. The letters
that we have of his relating to this period are buoyant with spirits
and self-congratulation at his happy lot. He writes to his step-mother
that he is every day more satisfied with his present mode of life,
which he always believed was most calculated to make him happy. The
stable and moderate stimulus of congenial society, alternating with
study, was what he liked. The excitement and dissipation of a town
life, which purchase pleasure to-day at the expense of fatigue and
disgust to-morrow, were as little to his taste as the amusements of
the country. In 1772, when he settled in London, he was young in
years, but he was old in tastes, and he enjoyed himself with the
complacency often seen in healthy old men. "My library," he writes to
Holroyd in 1773, "Kensington Gardens, and a few parties with new
acquaintance, among whom I reckon Goldsmith and Sir Joshua Reynolds,"
(poor Goldsmith was to die the year following), "fill up my time, and
the monster _ennui_ preserves a very respectful distance. By the by,
your friends Batt, Sir John Russell, and Lascelles dined with me one
day before they set off: _for I sometimes give the prettiest little
dinner in the world_." One can imagine Gibbon, the picture of
plumpness and content, doing the honours of his modest household.
Still he was never prominent in society, even after the publication of
his great work had made him famous. Lord Sheffield says that his
conversation was superior to his writings, and in a circle of intimate
friends it is probable that this was true. But in the free encounter
of wit and argument, the same want of readiness that made him silent
in parliament would most likely restrict his conversational power. It
may be doubted if there is a striking remark or saying of his on
record. His name occurs in Boswell, but nearly always as a _persona
muta_. Certainly the arena where Johnson and Burke encountered each
other was not fitted to bring out a shy and not very quick man.
Against Johnson he manifestly harboured a sort of grudge, and if he
ever felt the weight of Ursa Major's paw it is not surprising.

He rather oddly preserved an instance of his conversational skill, as
if aware that he would not easily get credit for it. The scene was in
Paris. "At the table of my old friend M.