reverse
qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is
elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless.
Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather
sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed
expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of
animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival
desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue
dropped the honey and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron; while
Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature.
COWLEY and KILLEGREW furnish another instance. COWLEY was embarrassed in
conversation, and had no quickness in argument or reply: a mind pensive
and elegant could not be struck at to catch fire: while with KILLEGREW the
sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.[A] When the delightful
conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both,
hit off the difference between them:

Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they had made a matchless wit.

[Footnote A: Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an
author rests, have not been republished with one exception--_the Parson's
Wedding_--which is given in Dodsley's collection; and which is sufficient
to satisfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had
great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but
are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was
sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his
duties.--ED.]

Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out many things in
conversation which have only been found admirable when the public
possessed them. The public often widely differ from the individual, and a
century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius is
sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal
Minerva to a private party for inspection. Before the artist they trembled
for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled; behind him they
calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public place,
in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the Divinity! There is a
certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed.

But enough of those defects of men of genius which often attend their
conversations. Must w