When the visit was over,
her father used to allude to his guest with a half-compassionate
air: "Poor Harry, he has aged terribly--I never saw a man so
changed, with such a limited range of interests; dear fellow, he
has quite lost his old humour. Well, well! it was a great pleasure
to see him here. He was very anxious that we should go to stay with
him, but I am afraid that will be rather difficult to manage; one
is so much at a loose end in a strange house, and then one's
correspondence gets into arrears. Poor old Harry! What a lively
creature he was up at Trinity, to be sure!" Thus with a sigh dust
is committed to dust.
"What passions our friendships were!" said Thackeray to FitzGerald,
speaking of University days. There is a shadow of melancholy in the
saying, because it implies that for Thackeray at all events that
kind of glow had faded out of life. Perhaps--who knows?--he had
accustomed himself, with those luminous, observant, humorous eyes,
to look too deep into the heart of man, to study too closely and
too laughingly the seamy side, the strange contrast between man's
hopes and his performances, his dreams and his deeds.
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