You will infallibly gather laurels if you
add to these the spear of sarcasm and the shield of nonchalance.
The high style of conversation where eloquence and philosophy emulate
each other, where principles are profoundly expounded and felicitously
illustrated, all this has ceased. It ceased in this country with Johnson
and Burke, and it requires a Johnson and a Burke for its maintenance.
There is no mediocrity in such discourse, no intermediate character
between the sage and the bore. The second style, where men, not things,
are the staple, but where wit, and refinement, and sensibility invest
even personal details with intellectual interest, does flourish at
present, as it always must in a highly civilised society. S. is, or
rather was, a fine specimen of this school, and M. and L. are his worthy
rivals. This style is indeed, for the moment, very interesting. Then
comes your conversation man, who, we confess, is our aversion. His talk
is a thing apart, got up before he enters the company from whose conduct
it should grow out. He sits in the middle of a large table, and, with a
brazen voice, bawls out his anecdotes about Sir Thomas or Sir Humphry,
Lord Blank, or my Lady Blue.
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