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 s