fer, in the absence
of the books, with great facility and accuracy. He was very fond of
Plautus, and would quote almost an entire scene, as accurately, and with
as natural a fluency and zest, as another would have shown in reading
off any of the scenes in a popular English play; often accompanying his
quotations with shrewd and ingenious critical comments. He was also very
fond of the French Dramatists, particularly Moliere, from whom I have
heard him quote entire scenes with wonderful accuracy. You might have
imagined him reading from the book, as I have several times myself
observed, and heard others remark: and all this he did in a perfectly
natural and unobtrusive way, as if merely to relieve an over-charged
mind, and give pleasure to those whom he credited with inclination and
ability to appreciate the excellencies which he pointed out. His memory
seemed, indeed, equally tenacious of things important and unimportant;
incapable, in short, of _forgetting_ any thing. I have heard him quote
long-forgotten but once popular and laughable trash, ballads, squibs,
epigrams, &c., till at length he revived in the listener such a sort of
recollection of them, as made him imagine that Mr. Smith must have
recently committed them to memory for some special purpose, but for
their appearing so really fresh and racy to him, and plainly suggested
by the casual current of conversation. He was, about this time, and for
years afterwards, a very frequent visiter at my house; and never was any
one, independently of my personal regard for him, more welcome; for his
conversation was always that of a ripe and varied scholar and fastidious
_gentleman_. He was ever gay and animated as soon as he had recovered,
which he quickly did, from the exhaustion of a long and severe day's
work, and his fund of anecdote appeared inexhaustible. Never was any man
farther removed from being that insufferable social nuisance, a
professed talker. Display of any kind was quite foreign to his nature;
and whenever he chanced to encounter a person cursed with that
propensity, he would sit in silence for a whole evening: not in the
silence of vexation or pique, but of a man left at leisure to pursue his
own thoughts, or calmly amuse himself with the characteristics of the
chatterer. If, while thus occupied, unexpectedly interrupted, or
appealed to by the aforesaid chatterer, or any one else, he readily
answered, though certainly with a somewhat frigid courtesy. It wa