Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, vol 2 | Page 3

parties
were a novelty to me; that we never had them in America, but that I
thought them the most delightful form of social life.

He seized upon the idea, as he often does, and turned it playfully inside
out, and shook it on all sides, just as one might play with the lustres of
a chandelier--to see them glitter. He expatiated on the merits of
breakfast parties as compared with all other parties. He said dinner
parties are mere formalities. You invite a man to dinner because you
must invite him; because you are acquainted with his grandfather, or it
is proper you should; but you invite a man to breakfast because you
want to see him. You may be sure, if you are invited to breakfast, there
is something agreeable about you. This idea struck me as very sensible;
and we all, generally having the fact before our eyes that we were
invited to breakfast, approved the sentiment.
"Yes," said Macaulay, "depend upon it; if a man is a bore he never gets
an invitation to breakfast."
"Rather hard on the poor bores," said a lady.
"Particularly," said Macaulay, laughing, "as bores are usually the most
irreproachable of human beings. Did you ever hear a bore complained
of when they did not say that he was the best fellow in the world? For
my part, if I wanted to get a guardian for a family of defenceless
orphans, I should inquire for the greatest bore in the vicinity. I should
know that he would be a man of unblemished honor and integrity."
The conversation now went on to Milton and Shakspeare. Macaulay
made one remark that gentlemen are always making, and that is, that
there is very little characteristic difference between Shakspeare's
women. Well, there is no hope for that matter; so long as men are not
women they will think so. In general they lump together Miranda,
Juliet, Desdemona, and Viola,
"As matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguished as
black, brown, or fair."
It took Mrs. Jameson to set this matter forth in her Characteristics of
Women; a book for which Shakspeare, if he could get up, ought to
make her his best bow, especially as there are fine things ascribed to
him there, which, I dare say, he never thought of, careless fellow that
he was! But, I take it, every true painter, poet, and artist is in some
sense so far a prophet that his utterances convey more to other minds
than he himself knows; so that, doubtless, should all the old masters
rise from the dead, they might be edified by what posterity has found in
their works.

Some how or other, we found ourselves next talking about Sidney
Smith; and it was very pleasant to me, recalling the evenings when
your father has read and we have laughed over him, to hear him spoken
of as a living existence, by one who had known him. Still, I have
always had a quarrel with Sidney, for the wicked use to which he put
his wit, in abusing good old Dr. Carey, and the missionaries in India;
nay, in some places he even stooped to be spiteful and vulgar. I could
not help, therefore, saying, when Macaulay observed that he had the
most agreeable wit of any literary man of his acquaintance, "Well, it
was very agreeable, but it could not have been very agreeable to the
people who came under the edge of it," and instanced his treatment of
Dr. Carey. Some others who were present seemed to feel warmly on
this subject, too, and Macaulay said,--
"Ah, well, Sidney repented of that, afterwards." He seemed to cling to
his memory, and to turn from every fault to his joviality, as a thing he
could not enough delight to remember.
Truly, wit, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. A man who has the
faculty of raising a laugh in this sad, earnest world is remembered with
indulgence and complacency, always.
There were several other persons of note present at this breakfast,
whose conversation I had not an opportunity of hearing, as they sat at a
distance from me. There was Lord Glenelg, brother of Sir Robert Grant,
governor of Bombay, whose beautiful hymns have rendered him
familiar in America. The favorite one, commencing "When gathering
clouds around I view," was from his pen. Lord Glenelg, formerly Sir
Charles Grant, himself has been the author of several pieces of poetry,
which were in their time quite popular.
The historian Hallam was also present, whose Constitutional History,
you will remember, gave rise to one of Macaulay's finest reviews; a
quiet, retiring man, with a benignant, somewhat sad, expression of
countenance. The loss of an only son has cast a shadow over his