creative energy and yet keep that
sanity of expectation which consists in distinguishing, as Dante does,
between the _cose che son vere_ outside the individual mind, and the
_non falsi errori_ which are the revelations of true imaginative power.

XIV.

THE TOO READY WRITER

One who talks too much, hindering the rest of the company from taking
their turn, and apparently seeing no reason why they should not rather
desire to know his opinion or experience in relation to all subjects, or
at least to renounce the discussion of any topic where he can make no
figure, has never been praised for this industrious monopoly of work
which others would willingly have shared in. However various and
brilliant his talk may be, we suspect him of impoverishing us by
excluding the contributions of other minds, which attract our curiosity
the more because he has shut them up in silence. Besides, we get tired
of a "manner" in conversation as in painting, when one theme after
another is treated with the same lines and touches. I begin with a
liking for an estimable master, but by the time he has stretched his
interpretation of the world unbrokenly along a palatial gallery, I have
had what the cautious Scotch mind would call "enough" of him. There is
monotony and narrowness already to spare in my own identity; what comes
to me from without should be larger and more impartial than the judgment
of any single interpreter. On this ground even a modest person, without
power or will to shine in the conversation, may easily find the
predominating talker a nuisance, while those who are full of matter on
special topics are continually detecting miserably thin places in the
web of that information which he will not desist from imparting. Nobody
that I know of ever proposed a testimonial to a man for thus
volunteering the whole expense of the conversation.

Why is there a different standard of judgment with regard to a writer
who plays much the same part in literature as the excessive talker plays
in what is traditionally called conversation? The busy Adrastus, whose
professional engagements might seem more than enough for the nervous
energy of one man, and who yet finds time to print essays on the chief
current subjects, from the tri-lingual inscriptions, or the Idea of the
Infinite among the prehistoric Lapps, to the Colorado beetle and the
grape disease in the south of France, is generally praised if not
admired for the breadth of his ment