Let one instance of elaborate invective suffice. Sir James Mackintosh, who, as the writer of the _Vindiciae Gallicae_, had been the foremost apologist for the French Revolution, fell later under the influence of Burke, and proclaimed the most unmeasured hostility to the Revolution and its authors, their works and ways. Having thus become a vehement champion of law and order, he exclaimed one day that O'Coighley, the priest who negotiated between the Revolutionary parties in Ireland and France, was the basest of mankind. "No, Mackintosh," replied that sound though pedantic old Whig, Dr. Parr; "he might have been much worse. He was an Irishman; he might have been a Scotsman. He was a priest; he might have been a lawyer. He was a rebel; he might have been a renegade." These severe forms of elaborated sarcasm belong, I think, to a past age. Lord Beaconsfield was the last man who indulged in them. When the Greville Memoirs--that mine of social information in which I have so often quarried--came out, some one asked Mr. Disraeli, as he then was, if he had read them. He replied, "No. I do not feel attracted to them. I remember the author, and he was the most conceited person with whom I have ever been brought in contact, although I have read Cicero and known Bulwer Lytton." This three-edged compliment has seldom been excelled. In a lighter style, and more accordant with feminine grace, was Lady Morley's comment on the decaying charms of her famous rival, Lady Jersey--the Zenobia of _Endymion_--of whom some gushing admirer had said that she looked so splendid going to court in her mourning array of black and diamonds--"it was like night." "Yes, my dear; _minuit passé_." A masculine analogue to this amiable compliment may be cited from the table-talk of Lord Granville--certainly not an unkindly man--to whom the late Mr. Delane had been complaining of the difficulty of finding a suitable wedding-present for a young lady of the house of Rothschild. "It would be absurd to give a Rothschild a costly gift. I should like to find something not intrinsically valuable, but interesting because it is rare." "Nothing easier, my dear fellow; send her a lock of your hair." When a remote cousin of Lord Henniker was elected to the Head Mastership of Rossall, a disappointed competitor said that it was a case of [Greek: eneka tou kuriou]; but a Greek joke is scarcely fair play. When the _New Review_ was started, its accomplished Editor designed it to be an inexpensive copy of the _Nineteenth Century_. It was to cost only sixpence, and was to be written by bearers of famous names--those of the British aristocracy for choice. He was complaining in society of the difficulty of finding a suitable title, when a vivacious lady said, "We have got _Cornhill_, and _Ludgate_, and _Strand_--why not call yours _Cheapside_?"