The conversation was chiefly about a volume of musical, tender, and humorous rhapsodies lately issued to the world in the guise of verse, which had been reviewed and talked about everywhere.  This topic, beginning as a private dialogue between a young painter named Ladywell and the lady on his right hand, had enlarged its ground by degrees, as a subject will extend on those rare occasions when it happens to be one about which each person has thought something beforehand, instead of, as in the natural order of things, one to which the oblivious listener replies mechanically, with earnest features, but with thoughts far away.  And so the whole table made the matter a thing to inquire or reply upon at once, and isolated rills of other chat died out like a river in the sands.

’Witty things, and occasionally Anacreontic:  and they have the originality which such a style must naturally possess when carried out by a feminine hand,’ said Ladywell.

‘If it is a feminine hand,’ said a man near.

Ladywell looked as if he sometimes knew secrets, though he did not wish to boast.

’Written, I presume you mean, in the Anacreontic measure of three feet and a half—­spondees and iambics?’ said a gentleman in spectacles, glancing round, and giving emphasis to his inquiry by causing bland glares of a circular shape to proceed from his glasses towards the person interrogated.

The company appeared willing to give consideration to the words of a man who knew such things as that, and hung forward to listen.  But Ladywell stopped the whole current of affairs in that direction by saying—­

’O no; I was speaking rather of the matter and tone.  In fact, the Seven Days’ Review said they were Anacreontic, you know; and so they are—­any one may feel they are.’

The general look then implied a false encouragement, and the man in spectacles looked down again, being a nervous person, who never had time to show his merits because he was so much occupied in hiding his faults.

‘Do you know the authoress, Mr. Neigh?’ continued Ladywell.

‘Can’t say that I do,’ he replied.

Neigh was a man who never disturbed the flesh upon his face except when he was obliged to do so, and paused ten seconds where other people only paused one; as he moved his chin in speaking, motes of light from under the candle-shade caught, lost, and caught again the outlying threads of his burnished beard.

’She will be famous some day; and you ought at any rate to read her book.’

’Yes, I ought, I know.  In fact, some years ago I should have done it immediately, because I had a reason for pushing on that way just then.’

‘Ah, what was that?’

’Well, I thought of going in for Westminster Abbey myself at that time; but a fellow has so much to do, and—­’

’What a pity that you didn’t follow it up.  A man of your powers, Mr. Neigh—­’

’Afterwards I found I was too steady for it, and had too much of the respectable householder in me.  Besides, so many other men are on the same tack; and then I didn’t care about it, somehow.’