The soul of conversation is sympathy.--Authors should converse chiefly
with authors, and their talk should be of books. "When Greek meets Greek,
then comes the tug of war." There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not
to be pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in life: it is getting
above himself, which is impossible. There is a Free-masonry in all things.
You can only speak to be understood, but this you cannot be, except by
those who are in the secret. Hence an argument has been drawn to supersede
the necessity of conversation altogether; for it has been said, that there
is no use in talking to people of sense, who know all that you can tell
them, nor to fools, who will not be instructed. There is, however, the
smallest encouragement to proceed, when you are conscious that the more
you really enter into a subject, the farther you will be from the
comprehension of your hearers--and that the more proofs you give of any
position, the more odd and out-of-the-way they will think your notions.
C---- is the only person who can talk to all sorts of people, on all sorts
of subjects, without caring a farthing for their understanding one word he
says--and _he_ talks only for admiration and to be listened to, and
accordingly the least interruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would
make just the same impression on half his audiences, if he purposely
repeated absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and
inexhaustible flow of undulating speech! In general, wit shines only by
reflection. You must take your cue from your company--must rise as they
rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that your good things, your
knowing allusions, are not flung away, like the pearls in the adage. What
a check it is to be asked a foolish question; to find that the first
principles are not understood! You are thrown on your back immediately,
the conversation is stopped like a country-dance by those who do not know
the figure. But when a set of adepts, of _illuminati_, get about a
question, it is worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel
over it, like dogs; but they pick it bare to the bone, they masticate it
thoroughly.
This was the case formerly at L----'s--where we used to have many lively
skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether the
Small-coal man's musical parties could exceed them. Oh! for the pen of
John Buncle to consecrate a _petit souvenir_ to their memory!--There was
L---- himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, the most witty and
sensible of men. He always made the best pun, and the best remark in the
course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing,
is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent
things in half a dozen half sentences as he does. His jests scald like
tears: and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen,
laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom! How
often did we cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed the haunch
of mutton on the table! How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we got
into the heart of controversy! How we picked out the marrow of authors!
"And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and true was freshly
remembered." Recollect (most sage and critical reader) that in all this I
was but a guest! Need I go over the names? They were but the old
everlasting set--Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and
Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's
prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton-court, and all those
things, that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not
then been heard of: so we said nothing about them. In general, we were
hard upon the moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in
Boswell's Life of him; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a
word for Junius. L---- could not bear Gil Blas. This was a fault. I
remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some
years' difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one
occasion, he was for making out a list of persons famous in history that
one would wish to see again--at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir
Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus--but we black-balled most of his list! But
with what a gusto would he describe his favourite authors, Donne, or Sir
Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages _delicious_! He tried
them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a
smack in them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he
hinted a defect in what he admired most--as in saying that the display of
the sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in true keeping, as the
simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of
hunger--and stating that Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost were too much like
married people. He has furnished many a text for C---- to preach upon.
There was no fuss or cant about him: nor were his sweets or his sours ever
diluted with one particle of affectation. I cannot say that the party at
L----'s were all of one description. There were honorary members,
lay-brothers. Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed over the
door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, "Has he written
anything?"--we were above that pedantry; but we waited to see what he
could do. If he could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down.
If a person liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient.
He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other things, besides
Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A character was good any where, in a
room or on paper. But we abhorred insipidity, affectation, and fine
gentlemen. There was one of our party who never failed to mark "two for
his Nob" at cribbage, and he was thought no mean person. This was Ned
P----, and a better fellow in his way breathes not. There was ----, who
asserted some incredible matter of fact as a likely paradox, and settled
all controversies by an _ipse dixit_, a _fiat_ of his will, hammering out
many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain--the Baron Munchausen of
politics and practical philosophy:--there was Captain ----, who had you at
an advantage by never understanding you:--there was Jem White, the author
of Falstaff's Letters, who the other day left this dull world to go in
search of more kindred spirits, "turning like the latter end of a lover's
lute:"--there was A----, who sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of
our set--and Mrs. R----, who being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy
debate. An utterly uninformed person might have supposed this a scene of
vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical question was pending,
while the most difficult problem in philosophy was solving, P---- cried
out, "That's game," and M. B. muttered a quotation over the last remains
of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once, and once only, the literary interest
overcame the general. For C---- was riding the high German horse, and
demonstrating the Categories of the Transcendental philosophy to the
author of the Road to Ruin; who insisted on his knowledge of German, and
German metaphysics, having read the _Critique of Pure Reason_ in the
original. "My dear Mr. Holcroft," said C----, in a tone of infinitely
provoking conciliation, "you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty
German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz forest in
Germany--and who one day, as I was reading the Limits of the Knowable and
the Unknowable, the profoundest of all his works, with great attention,
came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, What, _you_ read Kant? Why,
_I_ that am a German born, don't understand him!" This was too much to
bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured tone, "Mr.
C----, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most
troublesome with your eloquence!" P---- held the cribbage-peg that was to
mark him game, suspended in his hand; and the whist table was silent for a
moment. I saw Holcroft down stairs, and, on coming to the landing-place in
Mitre-court, he stopped me to observe, that "he thought Mr. C---- a very
clever man, with a great command of language, but that he feared he did
not always affix very precise ideas to the words he used." After he was
gone, we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on the nature of
Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a publisher for
it: it would make a supplement to the _Biographia Literaria_ in a volume
and a half octavo.
Those days are over! An event, the name of which I wish never to mention,
broke up our party, like a bombshell thrown into the room: and now we
seldom meet----
"Like angels' visits, short and far between."
There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations. L----
does not live where he did. By shifting his abode, his notions seem less
fixed. He does not wear his old snuff-coloured coat and breeches. It
looks like an alteration in his style. An author and a wit should have a
separate costume, a particular cloth: he should present something positive
and singular to the mind, like Mr. Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the
religion of letters will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together
again by caprice or accident. L. H---- goes there sometimes. He has a fine
vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood in his veins: but he is better
at his own table. He has a great flow of pleasantry and delightful animal
spirits: but his hits do not tell like L----'s; you cannot repeat them the
next day. He requires not only to be appreciated, but to have a select
circle of admirers and devotees, to feel himself quite at home. He sits at
the head of a party with great gaiety and grace; has an elegant manner and
turn of features; is never at a loss--_aliquando sufflaminandus erat_--has
continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy; tells a story capitally;
mimics an actor, or an acquaintance to admiration; laughs with great glee
and good-humour at his own or other people's jokes; understands the point
of an equivoque, or an observation immediately; has a taste and knowledge
of books, of music, of medals; manages an argument adroitly; is genteel
and gallant, and has a set of bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at
hand to produce a laugh:--if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen
so well as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of being
looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, however, he has
pretty well seen the folly of this. Neither is his ready display of
personal accomplishment and variety of resources an advantage to his
writings. They sometimes present a desultory and slipshod appearance,
owing to this very circumstance. The same things that tell, perhaps, best,
to a private circle round the fireside, are not always intelligible to the
public, nor does he take pains to make them so. He is too confident and
secure of his audience. That which may be entertaining enough with the
assistance of a certain liveliness of manner, may read very flat on paper,
because it is abstracted from all the circumstances that had set it off to
advantage. A writer should recollect that he has only to trust to the
immediate impression of words, like a musician who sings without the
accompaniment of an instrument. There is nothing to help out, or slubber
over, the defects of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the
other. The reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea of L. H----'s
conversation from a very agreeable paper he has lately published, called
the _Indicator_, than which nothing can be more happily conceived or
executed.
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
Authors in general are not good listeners. Some of the best talkers are,
on this account, the worst company; and some who are very indifferent, but
very great talkers, are as bad. It is sometimes wonderful to see how a
person, who has been entertaining or tiring a company by the hour
together, drops his countenance as if he had been shot, or had been seized
with a sudden lock-jaw, the moment anyone interposes a single observation.
The best converser I know is, however, the best listener. I mean Mr.
Northcote, the painter. Painters by their profession are not bound to
shine in conversation, and they shine the more. He lends his ear to an
observation, as if you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it
with as much avidity and earnestness, as if it interested himself
personally. If he repeats an old remark or story, it is with the same
freshness and point as for the first time. It always arises out of the
occasion, and has the stamp of originality. There is no parroting of
himself. His look is a continual, ever-varying history-piece of what
passes in his mind. His face is as a book. There need no marks of
interjection or interrogation to what he says. His manner is quite
picturesque. There is an excess of character and _naivete_ that never
tires. His thoughts bubble up and sparkle, like beads on old wine. The
fund of anecdote, the collection of curious particulars, is enough to set
up any common retailer of jests, that dines out every day; but these are
not strung together like a row of galley-slaves, but are always introduced
to illustrate some argument or bring out some fine distinction of
character. The mixture of spleen adds to the sharpness of the point, like
poisoned arrows. Mr. Northcote enlarges with enthusiasm on the old
painters, and tells good things of the new. The only thing he ever vexed
me in was his liking the _Catalogue Raisonnee_. I had almost as soon hear
him talk of Titian's pictures (which he does with tears in his eyes, and
looking just like them) as see the originals, and I had rather hear him
talk of Sir Joshua's than see them. He is the last of that school who knew
Goldsmith and Johnson. How finely he describes Pope! His elegance of mind,
his figure, his character were not unlike his own. He does not resemble a
modern Englishman, but puts one in mind of a Roman Cardinal or Spanish
Inquisitor. I never ate or drank with Mr. Northcote; but I have lived on
his conversation with undiminished relish ever since I can remember,--and
when I leave it, I come out into the street with feelings lighter and more
etherial than I have at any other time.--One of his _tete-a-tetes_ would
at any time make an Essay; but he cannot write himself, because he loses
himself in the connecting passages, is fearful of the effect, and wants
the habit of bringing his ideas into one focus or point of view. A _lens_
is necessary to collect the diverging rays, the refracted and broken
angular lights of conversation on paper. Contradiction is half the battle
in talking--the being startled by what others say, and having to answer
on the spot. You have to defend yourself, paragraph by paragraph,
parenthesis within parenthesis. Perhaps it might be supposed that a person
who excels in conversation and cannot write, would succeed better in
dialogue. But the stimulus, the immediate irritation would be wanting; and
the work would read flatter than ever, from not having the very thing it
pretended to have.
Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different things. There
are many persons of that impatient and restless turn of mind, that they
cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, or follow up the thread of any
argument. In the hurry of conversation their ideas are somehow huddled
into sense; but in the intervals of thought, leave a great gap between.
Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it:
yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in
my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Horne Tooke,
among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no one could write a good
style who was not in the habit of talking and hearing the sound of his own
voice. He might as well have said that no one could relish a good style
without reading it aloud, as we find common people do to assist their
apprehension. But there is a method of trying periods on the ear, or
weighing them with the scales of the breath, without any articulate sound.
Authors, as they write, may be said to "hear a sound so fine, there's
nothing lives 'twixt it and silence." Even musicians generally compose in
their heads. I agree that no style is good that is not fit to be spoken or
read aloud with effect. This holds true not only of emphasis and cadence,
but also with regard to natural idiom and colloquial freedom. Sterne's was
in this respect the best style that ever was written. You fancy that you
hear the people talking. For a contrary reason, no college-man writes a
good style, or understands it when written. Fine writing is with him all
verbiage and monotony--a translation into classical centos or hexameter
lines.
That which I have just mentioned is among many instances I could give of
ingenious absurdities advanced by Mr. Tooke in the heat and pride of
controversy. A person who knew him well, and greatly admired his talents,
said of him that he never (to his recollection) heard him defend an
opinion which he thought right, or in which he believed him to be himself
sincere. He indeed provoked his antagonists into the toils by the very
extravagance of his assertions, and the teasing sophistry by which he
rendered them plausible. His temper was prompter to his skill. He had the
manners of a man of the world, with great scholastic resources. He flung
everyone else off his guard, and was himself immovable. I never knew
anyone who did not admit his superiority in this kind of warfare. He put a
full stop to one of C----'s long-winded prefatory apologies for his youth
and inexperience, by saying abruptly, "Speak up, young man!" and, at
another time, silenced a learned professor, by desiring an explanation of
a word which the other frequently used, and which, he said, he had been
many years trying to get at the meaning of,--the copulative Is! He was the
best intellectual fencer of his day. He made strange havoc of Fuseli's
fantastic hieroglyphics, violent humours, and oddity of dialect.--Curran,
who was sometimes of the same party, was lively and animated in convivial
conversation, but dull in argument; nay, averse to anything like reasoning
or serious observation, and had the worst taste I ever knew. His favourite
critical topics were to abuse Milton's Paradise Lost, and Romeo and
Juliet. Indeed, he confessed a want of sufficient acquaintance with books
when he found himself in literary society in London. He and Sheridan once
dined at John Kemble's with Mrs. Inchbald and Mary Wolstonecraft, when
the discourse almost wholly turned on Love, "from noon to dewy eve, a
summer's day!" What a subject! What speakers, and what hearers! What would
I not give to have been there, had I not learned it all from the bright
eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a _Table-talk_ of it!--Peter
Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound in
technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross
and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on
subjects of poetry (his own out of the question)--Coleridge well on every
subject, and G--dwin on none. To finish this subject--Mrs. M----'s
conversation is as fine-cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room
with that sort of coronet face. What she said leaves a flavour, like fine
green tea. H--t's is like champagne, and N----'s like anchovy sandwiches.
H--yd--n's is like a game at trap-ball: L----'s like snap-dragon: and my
own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike a game at
nine-pins!... One source of the conversation of authors, is the character
of other authors, and on that they are rich indeed. What things they say!
What stories they tell of one another, more particularly of their friends!
If I durst only give some of these confidential communications!... The
reader may perhaps think the foregoing a specimen of them:--but indeed he
is mistaken.
I do not know of any greater impertinence, than for an obscure individual
to set about pumping a character of celebrity. "Bring him to me," said a
Doctor Tronchin, speaking of Rousseau, "that I may see whether he has
anything in him." Before you can take measure of the capacity of others,
you ought to be sure that they have not taken measure of yours. They may
think you a spy on them, and may not like their company. If you really
want to know whether another person can talk well, begin by saying a good
thing yourself, and you will have a right to look for a rejoinder. "The
best tennis-players," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "make the best matches."
----------------For wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best players.
We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, that they are
very stupid people in private. But he was a fool that said so. _Tell me
your company, and I'll tell you your manners._ In conversation, as in
other things, the action and reaction should bear a certain proportion to
each other.--Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, who
are not naturalised even in their native soil. L---- once came down into
the country to see us. He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among
the Goths." The country people thought him an oddity, and did not
understand his jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make
any, while he staid. But when he crossed the country to Oxford, then he
spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well met; and in
the quadrangles, he "walked gowned."
There is a character of a gentleman; so there is a character of a scholar,
which is no less easily recognised. The one has an air of books about him,
as the other has of good-breeding. The one wears his thoughts as the other
does his clothes, gracefully; and even if they are a little old-fashioned,
they are not ridiculous: they have had their day. The gentleman shows, by
his manner, that he has been used to respect from others: the scholar that
he lays claim to self-respect and to a certain independence of opinion.
The one has been accustomed to the best company; the other has passed his
time in cultivating an intimacy with the best authors. There is nothing
forward or vulgar in the behaviour of the one; nothing shrewd or petulant
in the observations of the other, as if he should astonish the
bye-standers, or was astonished himself at his own discoveries. Good taste
and good sense, like common politeness, are, or are supposed to be,
matters of course. One is distinguished by an appearance of marked
attention to every one present; the other manifests an habitual air of
abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an upstart with all the
self-important airs of the founder of his own fortune; nor the other a
self-taught man, with the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises from an
ignorance of what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse perhaps a
little conscious family-pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry
in the other.--As there is a class of the first character which sinks into
the mere gentleman, that is, which has nothing but this sense of
respectability and propriety to support it--so the character of a scholar
not unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is
left of it but the mere book-worm. There is often something amiable as
well as enviable in this last character. I know one such instance, at
least. The person I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is only
dazzled by its light. He lives among old authors, if he does not enter
much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and turns over the page,
and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. He
hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the
outside of knowledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows
learning as its shadow; but as such, he is respectable. He browzes on the
husk and leaves of books, as the young fawn browzes on the bark and leaves
of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has
never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things. He believes
implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names
of these things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the
finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good
women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight of his cell,
the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, and all the people
he sees are but so many figures in a _camera obscura_. He reads the world,
like a favourite volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition
of some old work which he is preparing for the press, only to make
emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt
in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted,
faithful, affectionate creatures--if Tray could but read! His mind cannot
take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall
to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the
guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he dies, his spirit will
take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others,
or the consciousness of one in itself!