Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/190

188 Emily.—"Did you know much of him?" Edward Lorraine.—"I never saw Mr. Thompson—(I wish, in order to interest you, he had had a more characteristic name)—but once. I had read in the very Magazine which contains Di Vasari, viz. Blackwood's, a tale called the Life of Charles Edwards—it struck me so much, that I grew curious about the author. I met him soon afterwards at a supper." Lady Mandeville.—"Could he talk?" Edward Lorraine.—"Wonderfully! Singular opinions singularly maintained! A flow of words, very felicitous, and yet such as no one else would have used. Not so much a love of, as a positive necessity for, contradiction seemed a part of his mind: add to this, extensive and out-of-the-way reading, and a ready memory—and if your imagination he very vivid, you will form some faint notion of his discourse." Lady Mandeville.—"I should like to judge for myself. You must introduce him." Edward Lorraine.—"Your command makes the impossible easy; but this is very impossible indeed. The subject of our discourse is dead. He died, as I have since heard, of a harassed mind, and a worn-out constitution. His history is one of the many brief and bitter pages in