one day giving too much, and the next, when they are
wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel[25] is in
another class from any I have mentioned. He is no debater, but appears
in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of
which I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first, he is
radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly hilltop,
and from that vantage-ground drops you his remarks like favours. He
seems not to share in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign of
interest; when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of wit, so
polished that the dull do not perceive it, but so right that the
sensitive are silenced. True talk should have more body and blood,
should be louder, vainer and more declaratory of the man; the true
talker should not hold so steady an advantage over whom he speaks
with; and that is one reason out of a score why I prefer my Purcel in
his second character, when he unbends into a strain of graceful
gossip, singing like the fireside kettle. In these moods he has an
elegant homeliness that rings of the true Queen Anne. I know another
person[26] who attains, in his moments, to the insolence of a
Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as Congreve[27] wrote; but
that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls under the rubric, for
there is none, alas! to give him answer.

One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine conversation that
the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the
circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should
appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk
is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should
represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind
of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and
where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to another,
there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity. It
is for this reason that talk depends so wholly on our company. We
should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir
Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of
us, by the Protean[28] quality of man, can talk to some degree with
all; but the true talk, that strikes out all the slumbering best of
us, comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded
as deep as love in the constitution of our being, and is a thing to
re