nvey
false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do not choose to speak, like
others, merely for the sake of talking." A vivid and sudden perception of
truth, or a severe scrutiny after it, may elevate the voice, and burst
with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversation. These men are
too much in earnest for the weak or the vain. Such seriousness kills their
feeble animal spirits. SMEATON, a creative genius of his class, had a
warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many: it arose from an
intense application of mind, which impelled him to break out hastily when
anything was said that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are
obstinate till they can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are
troublesome intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is only
the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while obscurity as
frequently may arise from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the
listener. It was said that NEWTON in conversation did not seem to
understand his own writings, and it was supposed that his memory had
decayed. The fact, however, was not so; and Pemberton makes a curious
distinction, which accounts for Newton _not always being ready to speak_
on subjects of which he was the sole master. "Inventors seem to treasure
up in their own minds what they have found out, after another manner than
those do the same things that have not this inventive faculty. The former,
when they have occasion to produce their knowledge, in some means are
obliged immediately to investigate part of what they want. For this they
are not equally fit at all times; and thus it has often happened, that
such as retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, have
appeared off-hand more expert than the discoverers themselves."

A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men of genius, which has
often injured them when the listeners were not intimately acquainted with
the men, are those sports of a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to throw
out paradoxical opinions, and to take unexpected views of things in some
humour of the moment. These fanciful and capricious ideas are the
grotesque images of a playful mind, and are at least as frequently
misrepresented as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning Philistines
are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour
of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in
the lap of wantonness, an