at it under the table and "refresh." It is easy to credit the assurance that this was "regarded as far the best joke about the don, and that the "laughter before he spoke was always greater than when he had sped his shaft." How much more fortunate was the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table! He met and delighted in a gentleman who said, sweetly and honestly, "I hate books." "I did not recognise in him," says Dr. O. W. Holmes, "inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character, and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship."

We find most vigorous talkers have a much wider outlook than their library window. Praed, in one of his best poems, describes the discursiveness of the Vicar :

His talk was like a stream which runs

With rapid change from rocks to roses :
It slipped from politics to puns,

It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep

For dressing eels or shoeing horses.

To come from poetry to fact, Burke and Samuel Johnson are good illustrations of this width of range. Burke could talk, it is said, on every subject except gaming and music. Johnson, of whom we know more, was an enormous, even a greedy, reader. Yet there was nothing of a prig about him. His recorded conversation displays a vast store of knowledge which books could never have given him. "They call me a scholar," said he, "and yet how very little literature there is in my conversation!" The knowledge he shows of trades is as remarkable as the similar knowledge which has puzzled commentators on Shakespeare's plays. Brewing and threshing, thatching and ditching, tanning, milk and the various operations upon it, gunpowder and "military topics," all were discussed by Johnson. Boswell once tried to sound the depth of Johnson's knowledge by enticing him to talk of the trade of a butcher. Boswell began in an artful way by referring to the practice in Otaheite, where, he said, they strangled dogs for food, but did not bleed them to death. The trap failed. Johnson immediately took up the subject; soon he was explaining how and why different animals are killed in different ways; finally, he went on to discourse on London slaughter-houses, and generally on the trade of a butcher. But this is no isolated case. Open Boswell's book anywhere and he will always prove the variety of Johnson's topics. Take, for example, Friday, the 7th of May, 1773, Johnson being then sixty-four. The VOL. CCLXX. NO. 1921.

C

record is plainly only of part of what was said, but even that falls on many things; on Lady Di Beauclerk, on the exuberant talk of old Mr. Langton, on the possibility of conversation by signs with Esquimaux, on Hawkesworth's compilation of voyages, on etymology, on the migration of birds, on the advantages of civilised life, on the differences between instinct and reason, on toleration, on suicide, on the invocation of the saints, and, of course, on the eternal question of Ireland. Boswell has justly concluded that Johnson's variety of information is "surprising."

Next to quickness and knowledge, if not first, come the moral qualifications for conversation, and of these the first, and about the last, is sympathy-feeling along with others in pleasure as well as in pain. We all know how essential this is between the actor and his audience. It is equally so on the world's larger stage. Sympathy is the cord which binds society together and renders conversation really pleasant and stimulating. Inequalities of taste and of intelligence render sympathy difficult and often impossible. Women are more sympathetic than men, and hence men delight to have in hand an innocent flirtation, or perhaps two; and when a clever man meets a clever woman, he is apt to declare, as Steele did of a noble woman of his acquaintance, "To know her is a liberal education."

Yet

If we knew enough about them, Aspasia and Cleopatra ought to be amongst the greatest instances of the power of sympathy in conversation. We are told that it was Aspasia who taught Socrates to speak of love and Pericles of heroism; and of the conversation of Cleopatra, that sweet-voiced woman who was wicked and bewitching in seven languages, Plutarch has left a most fascinating description. concerning these women of old time our information is scanty. In modern days, some of the best illustrations of the intimate connection between sympathy and conversation are to be found in France. An Englishman of the last century declared that a Frenchwoman would "draw wit out of a fool." Madame Récamier is one of the best instances of the power of a sympathetic woman to make and keep a circle worth knowing. Her personal attractions were considerable. Her portraits, by Gerard and David, at the Louvre, help us to understand her fame, and why Lamartine could declare that one look sufficed to bind your heart to her for ever. The good social position with which she started was also an advantage. But these were not Madame Récamier's secret. Many have enjoyed them without having her influence. The secret by which she influenced many clever people, and made them come to her to talk over their projects or their efforts, was the certainty of finding in her an

attentive hearer and a kindly adviser. Her sympathy seemed without limit. So it came to pass that, without great intellectual attainments, in youth and in age, in health and in sickness, sorrow, and blindness, in Parisian salons and in a garret, she had around her the best talk of her day.

If women afford the classic instances of sympathy, men, it must be admitted, show how the lack of it alone will render conversation difficult or impossible. What is to be the punishment of the great living historian who, after some one had addressed him in earnest words, replied "Your collar is undone"? What shall we say as to Coleridge, who according to the universal testimony of candid friends, forgot that conversation is talking with, rather than to the company, and would hold forth by the hour in eloquent transcendental monologue ? When Isaac Barrow, whose sermons would occupy over three hours, preached so long at Westminster Abbey that he took up part of the time used by the vergers for "lionising the church," they caused the organ to play till they had "blowed him down." Society possesses no such violent antidote to the talking monopolist; and many a party of friends has been marred by his unsympathetic performances. Good conversation, indeed, demands some self-effacement, and too many clever men are unwilling to make the sacrifice. They are much more willing to lead up to their good things, as Diogenes is said to have led up to his bitter ones and Sheridan to his smart ones. It is not everyone who could follow the example of Montaigne and put his company on those subjects they were best able to speak of. The rule of silence is still harder, yet listening is half the art of conversation. "The honourablest part of talk," says Bacon, "is to give the occasion." Macaulay forgot it. We have all heard Sydney Smith's definition of Macaulay's talk, which afforded "splendid flashes of silence." John Stuart Mill had a less-known tale of two French monologists pitted against each other. "One was in full possession, but so intent was the other upon striking in that a third person, watching the contest, exclaimed, If he spits, he's done.'"

Tact may be the result of calculating prudence, or it may be instinctive, and a sort of lesser sympathy. It is not to be expressed by rules, and is above all rules. The good or learned, aspiring to succeed in conversation, may well remember the question:

What boots it thy virtue,

What profit thy parts,
While one thing thou lackest-

The art of all arts?

Rogers, the poet, is credited with some very bitter things, but he had a kindly heart, as his poorer friends knew, and his manner of varying one of his tales shows much tact. An Englishman and a Frenchman (he used to say) who were to fight a duel, agreed, in order that they might have a better chance of missing one another, that they would fight in a room perfectly dark. The Englishman groped his way to the hearth, fired up the chimney, and brought down the Frenchman. In France the tact came in. "Whenever I tell this story in Paris," adds Rogers, "I make the Frenchman fire up the chimney."

Sometimes conversation is spoilt by a lack not merely of tact, but of tolerance. It is not everyone who can see that "all religions are the same wine in different-coloured glasses,” or that the State will take a great deal of killing. Hence, so imperfect is the average temper that, to keep the peace, religion and politics are often tabooed, and thus conversation is deprived of two of the greatest topics which can ever interest humanity. A more liberal rule is needed in these things. That must have been an interesting company which was described by Emerson. "There," says he, "were broached life, love, marriage, sex, hatred, suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, religion, myself, thyself, all selves, and whatever else, with a security and vivacity which belonged to the nobility of the parties, and to their brave truth. The life of these persons was conducted in the same calm and affirmative manner as their discourse. Life to them was an experiment continually varied, full of results, full of grandeur, and by no means the hot and hurried business which passes in the world." It is easy to understand Emerson's declaration that such a "pure and brilliant social atmosphere doubles the value of life." This society is what we want here and now. No doubt, to drag in irrelevant topics is an impertinence, but to exclude great ones keeps conversation at a very low and ebbing tide.

This freedom for discussion of high themes may seem to commit us to a preference for very serious conversation. In reality I only intend to protest against the exclusion of topics for which, if we care naught, we must be more or less than human. "What, then," one will say, "is to be the aim of conversation? Is it instruction or recreation, and, if the former, why say nothing touching the great. virtue of sincerity?" I have reserved these dreaded questions to the last, and now I find I must make short work of them. Perhaps they need no more. Is it not sufficient to say that good conversation 15 of at least two kinds? There is the conversation of students who met, as Mill and Grote and others did, in the Bank at Threadneedle

Street, where before business began, they debated economic problems. There is also the conversation in which, after a hard day's work, we are glad to throw off the dominion of logic and remember that it is also necessary sometimes to play the fool. The improvement of either sort helps the other. But this latter sort of conversation, the conversation of recreation, will always hold by far the larger space in men's thoughts. Knowledge we may get from books, but wit and humour-what are these at second hand? Often but funeral baked meats. We may, so far as conversation is concerned, be righteous overmuch. There has been a recent lamentation over the "decay of lying." Let us all protest against any person's right to exclude imagination from our talk. It is an outrage to ask whether a good story is true. Those severe persons who always feel it their duty to be very accurate, and to demand accuracy, those who sit down by the fireside, with the ten commandments written on their faces, and are conscientious at any cost, are no doubt pillars of society, but they are simply nuisances so far as conversation is concerned, and ought to have homes, or rather asylums, for themselves.

Let no one think this topic too trivial. It is really an important one, and I have endeavoured to justify its serious consideration. In the eagerness of existence, we are apt to forget that learning or riches may become a burden, and virtue alone almost odious.

But something whispers to my heart

That as we downward tend,
Lycoris! life requires an art

To which our souls must bend.

And in this greatest of all arts, the art of living-so much greater than any special art-conversation must always play a large part. When it is regarded by all as a fine art, in which they would excel, the charms of society will be increased a hundredfold.

GEORGE WHALE