Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/235

Rh Lady Mandeville.—"I cannot but think the commonplace and sweeping satire he bestows on us a great fault in the clever and original author of Sydenham. However, I hold it but as the ingenious vanity of a young man: had he praised people would only have said, 'very interesting, but so romantic;' but he censures, and the remark is, 'he must know a great deal to know so much evil.' Perhaps this is the cause why the judgments of the young are generally so severe,—censure has to them somewhat the seeming of experience; and in reason as in fashion, we doubly affect what we have not." Mr. Morland.—"it puts me in mind of a little speech of his to a lady who reproached him for praising her young friend's style of wreath and ringlet, when he knew it was not becoming.—'Could you suspect me of speaking the truth to a young lady?'" Lady Mandeville.—"Now the knowledge of our sex that speech supposed. Nothing is so disparaging as vanity. It seems, like the Tartar, to suppose it acquires the qualities of the individual it destroys." Edward Lorraine.—"To return to our theatricals; I was delighted with Miss Kemble's