well.  I did not think we could so soon have had occasion to regret poor Kingsley.”  To a gushing admirer who said that a popular preacher had so much taste—­“Oh yes; so very much, and all so very bad.”  Of a certain Dr. Woods, who wrote elementary mathematical books for schoolboys, and whose statue occupies the most conspicuous position in the ante-chapel of St. John’s College—­“The Johnian Newton.”  His hit at the present Chief Secretary for Ireland,[22] when he was a junior Fellow of Trinity, is classical—­“We are none of us infallible—­not even the youngest of us.”  But it requires an eye-witness of the scene to do justice to the exordium of the Master’s sermon on the Parable of the Talents, addressed in Trinity Chapel to what considers itself, and not without justice, the cleverest congregation in the world.  “It would be obviously superfluous in a congregation such as that which I now address to expatiate on the responsibilities of those who have five, or even two, talents.  I shall therefore confine my observations to the more ordinary case of those of us who have one talent.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[22] The Right Hon. G.W.  Balfour.

XIX.

REPARTEE.

Lord Beaconsfield, describing Monsignore Berwick in Lothair, says that he “could always, when necessary, sparkle with anecdote or blaze with repartee.”  The former performance is considerably easier than the latter.  Indeed, when a man has a varied experience, a retentive memory, and a sufficient copiousness of speech, the facility of story-telling may attain the character of a disease.  The “sparkle” evaporates while the “anecdote” is left.  But, though what Mr. Pinto called “Anecdotage” is deplorable, a repartee is always delightful:  and, while by no means inclined to admit the general inferiority of contemporary conversation to that of the last generation, I am disposed to think that in the art of repartee our predecessors excelled us.

If this is true, it may be partly due to the greater freedom of an age when well-bred men and refined women spoke their minds with an uncompromising plainness which would now be voted intolerable.  I have said that the old Royal Dukes were distinguished by the racy vigour of their conversation; and the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King Ernest of Hanover, was held to excel all his brothers in this respect.  I was told by the late Sir Charles Wyke that he was once walking with the Duke of Cumberland along Piccadilly when the Duke of Gloucester (first cousin to Cumberland, and familiarly known as “Silly Billy”) came out of Gloucester House.  “Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Gloucester, stop a minute.  I want to speak to you,” roared the Duke of Cumberland.  Poor Silly Billy, whom nobody ever noticed, was delighted to find himself thus accosted, and ambled up smiling.  “Who’s your tailor?” shouted Cumberland.  “Stultz,” replied Gloucester.  “Thank you.  I only wanted to know, because, whoever he is, he ought to be avoided like a pestilence.”  Exit Silly Billy.