morning of departure a lady asked him, 'Pray, are you the clever Mr. Lillian?' 'I never answer flattering questions,' was his reply—or, perhaps, the reply of his brother, the 'clever Mr. Lillian,' for him, for he himself told me the story."
"Who is that youth to the left, in an attitude?"
"One who always reminds me of the French actor's reply to the manager, who asked what parts he was fit for—'Mais tous.' Such is Mr. Vincent's self-estimate. They say happiness is only the finer word for self-satisfaction—if so, Mr. Vincent is a happy man. He has embodied a general system of depreciatives, out of which he extracts most 'strange contents.' I never yet heard him allow merit to man, woman or child; he speaks only in the subjunctive mood, governed by an if or a but. Talk to him of a witty person, and he finds out at once,
'That flippancy to wit is near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.'
If serious, he asks—
'Shall grave and formal pass for wise,
When men the solemn owl despise?'
