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316 great. She possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous, and frequently amused herself by putting grave things in a laughable light, but in her satire there was nothing ill-natured or severe; and sometimes, whimsically assuming a character totally foreign to her own, she would express sentiments and maintain opinions, which would have impressed those not well acquainted with her worth, with the idea that she was a trifling and unintellectual person.

The same friend who has expressed the above opinion of her, observes that "the conversation of L. E. L. was as brilliant as her writings, showing upon all occasions which called it forth, not merely in society, where she was the idol, but as the solitary companion of the rural walk, or fireside, always ready to amuse and be amused, and avenging any little quarrel with the world by the utterance of some misanthropic sentiment, the only ebullition of temper she was known to indulge." Mr. Laman Blanchard, her confidential friend and literary executor, to whom she entrusted materials for the biography with which he has since favoured the world, and to the pages of which we are mainly indebted for this memoir, observes, "It would be no easy task to trace her studies in regular order, or to point out the sources of her extensive and varied knowledge. She often exhibited an acquaintance with books which could hardly by accident (it would appear) have been thrown in her way; and how she acquired, so early in life as she did, an insight into those subjects of foreign lore which she afterwards evinced a thorough acquaintance with, was little short of a mystery. She was well read in French, and almost equally well in Italian literature. She had, in truth, been an