Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/150

 Williams fell forever from the bright circle of literary stars; and Lady Morgan, who met her years afterwards in Paris, had nothing more interesting to record than that she had grown "immensely fat,"—an unpoetic and unworthy thing to do. "For when corpulence, which is a gift of evil, cometh upon age, then are vanished the days of romance and of stirring deeds."

Yet sentiment, if not romance, clung illusively to the literary lady, even when she surrendered nothing to persuasion. Strange shadowy stories of courtship are told with pathetic simplicity. Miss Carter, "when she had nearly attained the mature age of thirty," was wooed by a nameless gentleman of unexceptionable character, whom "she was induced eventually to refuse, in consequence of his having written some verses, of the nature of which she disapproved." Whether these verses were improper (perish the thought!) or merely ill-advised, we shall never know; but as the rejected suitor "expressed ever after a strong sense of Miss Carter's handsome behaviour to him," there seems to have been on his part something perilously akin to acquiescence. "I wonder,"