WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS
Aldersons were very musical) while the sun went down. Two verses are sufficiently characteristic:
"Now sparkling hock and sparkling wit
Are vying with each other,
And one bright flash of repartee
Is followed by another.
And grave ecclesiastics too,
With lawyers shrewd and cunning,
Contend with squires and ladies fair
In the gay art of punning."
The whole book is full of the atmosphere of the irresponsible years between childhood and maturity. One feels it must all have been great fun.
Georgiana "came out," like other girls, when she grew up, and is generally believed to have enjoyed that also. Indeed, she might have taken as one of her secondary mottoes in life the old couplet:
"Pastime and good company
I love and shall until I die,"
with perhaps the rider that good company was the pastime best worth having. She had great vitality and a brilliant wit, and both made her such good company that a friend paraphrased Wilke's famous boast on her behalf and said that, given ten minutes' lead (to make up for her want of looks, for she was not considered
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