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Would I could keep on forgetting him. "You have taught me To be in love with noble thoughts." That clever bon-mot, "To say 'everybody is talking about him' is a eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a delicious bit deserves a longer life.
The best things we say miss fire in conversation; only second-rate shots hit the mind through the ear. This, we will suppose, is why David derived no amusement or delectation from Mr. Bazalgette's inadvertent but admirable bon-mot. "Go to the Devil! you are too good for this world."
But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable, dismiss the Archbishop without reading his homily, pass by a folio in twenty grenadier volumes to greet a little black-coated, yellow-faced duodecimo, speak to the forlorn and forsaken, who have been doing dusty penance upon cloistered shelves in silent alcoves for a century, with none so poor to do them reverence, read here one little catch which came from lips long ago as silent as the clod which they are kissing, and there some forgotten fragment of history, too insignificant to make its way into the world's magnificent chronologies, snapping up unconsidered trifles of anecdote, tasting some long-interred bon-mot and relishing some disentombed scandal, pausing over the symphonic prose of Milton, only to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger, and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato.
We read, we work, we walk, and when fatigued with these Employments releive our spirits, either by a lively song, a graceful Dance, or by some smart bon-mot, and witty repartee. We are handsome my dear Charlotte, very handsome and the greatest of our Perfections is, that we are entirely insensible of them ourselves. But why do I thus dwell on myself!
If we were to select an epoch in history and a form of society for which he was best adapted, we should place him in France daring the Regency and the reign of Louis XV. There, where a successful bon-mot established a claim to office, and a well-turned leg did more for a man than the best mind in Europe, Burr would have risen to distinction.
L'abbé, ne sçavez vous pas que ce n'est pas un opéra boufon?" and here is another bon-mot of my Lady Townshend: we were talking of Methodists; somebody said, "Pray, Madam, is it true that Whitfield has recanted?" "No, sir, he has only canted." If you ever think of returning to England, as I hope it will be long first, you must prepare yourself with Methodism.
We read, we work, we walk, and when fatigued with these Employments releive our spirits, either by a lively song, a graceful Dance, or by some smart bon-mot, and witty repartee. We are handsome my dear Charlotte, very handsome and the greatest of our Perfections is, that we are entirely insensible of them ourselves. But why do I thus dwell on myself!
You answered me there," laughed the young dandy. "In an hour's time that bon-mot will be repeated in every salon of the town. Well, what's the news in Paris, my dear money monarch? I don't want bad news tell me only the good!" "The best news," said the banker, "is that we see you in Paris again. And still better news than that is seeing you here."
When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by the birds, he burst into tears. A man of war, he knows the value of peas. I told him they were an excellent sort, "The Champion of England." As quick as a flash he said, "Why don't you call them 'The Reverdy Johnson'?" It was a very clever bon-mot; but I changed the subject.
"Oh, that it's shocking to be sure!" said Lady Augusta, "if one thinks of it; so the only way is not to think about it." "An excellent bon-mot!" exclaimed Dashwood. "It's thinking that spoils conversation, and every thing else."
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