dixit, a fiat of his will, hammering out many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain-the Baron Munchausen of politics and practical philosophy; there was Captain Burney, who had you at an advantage by never understanding you; there was Jem White, the author of 'Falstaff's Letters,' who the other day left this dull world to go in search of more kindred spirits, "turning like the latter end of a lover's lute;" there was Ayrton, who sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of our set-and Mrs Reynolds, who being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy debate. An utterly uninformed person might have supposed this a scene of vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical question was pending, while the most difficult problem in philosophy was solving, Phillips cried out, "That's game," and Martin Burney muttered a quotation over the last remains of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once, and once only, the literary interest overcame the general. For Coleridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the Categories of the Transcendental philosophy to the author of the Road to Ruin ;' who insisted on his knowledge of German, and German metaphysics, having read the Critique of Pure Reason' in the original.

66

'My dear Mr Holcroft," said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely provoking conciliation, "you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty German girl, about fifteen,

F

6

that I met with in the Hartz forest in Germany, and who one day, as I was reading the 'Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable,' the profoundest of all his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, What, you read Kant? Why, I that am a German born, don't understand him!'" This was too much to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured tone, " Mr Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence!" Phillips held the cribbage-peg that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand; and the whist-table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft down stairs, and, on coming to the landing-place in Mitre court, he stopped me to observe, that "he thought Mr Coleridge a very clever man, with a great command of language, but that he feared he did not always affix very precise ideas to the words he used." After he was gone, we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on the nature of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a publisher for it: it would make a supplement to the Biographia Literaria in a volume and half octavo.

Those days are over! An event, the name of which I wish never to mention, broke up our party, like a bomb-shell thrown into the room : and now we seldom meet

"Like angels' visits, short and far between."

There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations. Lamb does not live where he did. By shifting his abode, his

notions seem less fixed. He does not wear his old snuffcoloured coat and breeches. It looks like an alteration in his style.

:

An author and a wit

should have a separate costume, a particular cloth he should present something positive and singular to the mind, like Mr Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the religion of letters will not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together again by caprice or accident. Leigh Hunt goes there sometimes. He has a fine vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood in his veins : but he is better at his own table. He has a great flow of pleasantry and delightful animal spirits; but his hits do not tell like Lamb's; you cannot repeat them the next day. He requires not only to be appreciated, but to have a select circle of admirers and devotees, to feel himself quite at home. He sits at the head of a party with great gaiety and grace; has an elegant manner and turn of features; is never at a loss-aliquando sufflaminandus erat—has continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy; tells a story capitally; mimics an actor, or an acquaintance, to admiration; laughs with great glee and good humour at his own or other people's jokes; understands the point of an equi

voque, or an observation, immediately; has a taste and knowledge of books, of music, of medals; manages an argument adroitly; is genteel and gallant, and has a set of bye-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to produce a laugh:-if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen so well as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of being looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, however, he has pretty well seen the folly of this. Neither is his ready display of personal accomplishment and variety of resources an advantage to his writings. They sometimes present a desultory and slip-shod appearance, owing to this very circumstance. The same things that tell, perhaps, best, to a private circle round the fireside, are not always intelligible to the public, nor does he take pains to make them so. He is too confident and secure of his audience. That which may be entertaining enough with the assistance of a certain liveliness of manner, may read very flat on paper, because it is abstracted from all the circumstances that had set it off to advantage. A writer should recollect that he has only to trust to the immediate impression of words, like a musician who sings without the accompaniment of an instrument. There is nothing to help out, or slubber over-the defects of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the other. The reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea of Leigh

Hunt's conversation from a very agreeable paper he has lately published, called the 'Indicator,' than which nothing can be more happily conceived or executed.

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. Some of the best talkers are, on this account, the worst company; and some who are very indifferent, but very great talkers, are as bad. It is sometimes wonderful to see how a person, who has been entertaining or tiring a company by the hour together, drops his countenance as if he had been shot, or had been seized with a sudden lock-jaw, the moment any one interposes a single observation. The best converser

listener.

I mean

I know is, however, the best Mr Northcote, the painter. Painters by their profession are not bound to shine in conversation, and they shine the more. He lends his ear to an observation as if you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it with as much avidity and earnestness as if it interested himself personally. If he repeats an old remark or story, it is with the same freshness and point as for the first time. It always arises out of the occasion, and has the stamp of originality. There is no parroting of himself. His look is a continual, ever-varying history-piece of what passes in his mind. His face is as a book. There need no marks of inter