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This penetrating and experienced personage was not to be duped by an affectation of that chivalry which, however natural at the court of Edward III., was no longer in unison with the more intriguing and ambitious times over which presided the luxurious husband of Elizabeth Woodville.
'Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, and at the same time with modesty.... I never saw a man in company more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. To these may be added the testimony of Dr.
Precious and well protected polish and refinement, and humanity, and Christian civilization! to which it is a matter of easy indifference to know that, in the neighborhood of their abode, those tortures of butchery are unnecessarily inflicted, which could not be actually witnessed by persons in whom the pretension to these fine qualities is anything better than affectation, without sensations of horror; which it would ruin the character of a fine gentleman or lady to have voluntarily witnessed in a single instance.
Full of the affectation of a 'dandy, he was yet rousing all Europe by a cry of pure sentimentalism. It would be absurd to attribute any definite doctrine to Byron. His scepticism in religious matters was merely part of a general revolt against respectability.
For some time, whenever she closed her eyes, the face and form of Lady Delacour, such as she had just beheld them, seemed to haunt her; afterwards, the idea of Clarence Hervey, and the painful recollection of the conversation she had overheard, recurred to her: the words, "Do you think I don't know that Belinda Portman is a composition of art and affectation?" fixed in her memory.
Your "Dialogues" breathe the pure spirit of virtue, of unaffected good sense, of just criticism, of fine taste. They are in general as superior to your countryman Fontenelle's as reason is to false wit, or truth to affectation. The greatest fault of them, I think, is, that some are too short. Fenelon.
"Rose-Mary" in particular exhibits the merits and defects of the poet in almost the clearest possible light, and it may be safely said that no English poet, not the very greatest, need have been ashamed of such a stanza as this, where there is no affectation worth speaking of, where the eternal and immortal commonplaces of poetry are touched to newness as only a master touches, and where the turn of the phrase and verse is impeccable and supreme:
He had an original genius for poetry of the highest kind; the absence of the usual affectation of the Alexandrian school, constant appeals to nature, a fine perception of character, and a keen sense of both the beautiful and the ludicrous, indicate the high order of his literary talent, and account for his universal and undiminished popularity.
They had music; Emma was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an air of greatness, meaning only to shew off in higher style her own very superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion.
Fanny kissed Redbud enthusiastically, which ceremony, as everybody knows, is, with young ladies, exactly equivalent to shaking hands among the men; and often indicates as little real good-feeling slanderous tongues have whispered. No one, however, could have imagined that there was any affectation in Fanny's warm kiss.
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