his vivid, pithy talk made on his friends. We remember nothing which better illustrates it than the description by Garrick of the talk of Adam Smith: What do you think, eh? Flabby, isn't it?' The word perfectly describes, by opposites, the qualities of Johnsonian conversation. It spoiled men for everything that was not both weighty and smart. It was at once gay and potent; its playfulness resembling the ricochetting of sixtyeight pounders, which bound like Indian-rubber balls, and yet batter down fortresses. Such talk could only come from a great, active, practical man. an. No mere scholar, no mere metaphysician, could ever have produced it. Johnson's conversation was, however, not suited to general society; but, with all its transcendent merit, had its limitations. It had not the winning, easy charm of Sir Walter Scott, but was stern and logical. It kept down all sorts of conversational excellence except its own, and gave rise afterwards to many inferior copies. Argument is seldom tolerable in conversation; but as this propensity of Johnson was easier to mimic than his unrivalled faculty of flinging out illustrations, men played at Johnson and Burke' who could ill reach the meanest qualities of either. The Edinburgh school which followed were a set of argumentative declaimers, or men who varied argument only by epigram. A perverse disputatiousness was seasoned by an unwholesome smartness. The indispensable requisite of nature was forgotten, These were the men who, as Lockhart tells us, thought Scott's conversation common-place;' the truth being that it was rich in ease, sense, and humour; while theirs was like the breakfasts in military novels, which seem to consist chiefly of devilled kidneys, grilled bones, and other fiery and salamandrine elements. We have one book of Ana, the Walpoliana,'* which more resembles French works of the kind than any other in our literature. Nor is this wonderful, since if ever a human being dearly loved Ana it was Horace Walpole, though they are for the most part the sweetmeats of literature, and are by no means to be made a staple article of diet. Unfortunately the Walpoliana contains much triviality about warming-pans that had belonged to Charles the Second,' and such congenial subjects; flavoured with a kind of satirical cynicism against men and man's nature, conceived and expressed in a way to make us fancy we are listening to a French soubrette who had studied Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. We must add that there are anecdotes against the characters of eminent individuals totally destitute of truth, yet told with a kind of gusto which would be disagrecable even Published in 1799. if they were unquestionably veracious. When we add that there are some good stories, many of them, however, borrowed, and that his peculiar brilliancy is shown in some happy bon-mots, we shall have said all that the book can fairly claim. Like Voltaire and Chesterfield, Walpole both wrote and talked wittily. Sydney Smith at once occurs as another instance of the combination. It will almost always be found that such wits or talkers are altogether greater than those, by no means rare, individuals who possess the oral gift only. Much of the charm which belongs to these last is found to resolve itself into person and manner. In a country, too, like England, where colloquial talent has never had so high a place as in other parts of Europe, and where consequently it is rarer, it will sometimes happen that a man, encouraged by the freedom of the field, devotes himself to it, to the exclusion of other pursuits. But such disciples of the 'Conversation Sharp' school are few. For the period immediately before the present we have the various Conversations' of Lord Byron, besides the ever-increasing Memoirs' and 'Diaries,' such as those of Mackintosh and Moore. Byron was a most remarkable talker. His more serious conversation,' said Shelley, is a sort of intoxication.' That his gayer kind was most shrewd, witty, and lively, those who must trust to records in the matter can see in his Life, and in the work on the subject by Lady Blessington. He seems to have talked Childe Harold or Don Juan at his pleasure, just as he could act either character. He has given us his opinion of all the great conversers of his day: Curran, with his poetic and imaginative wildness; De Staël, with her sentimental glitter; Luttrell's elegant epigram; Lord Dudley's pregnant point; the convivial brilliance of Sheridan and Colman; the fairy grace and ornament of Moore; and the abundant knowledge, the precision, and the modesty of Mackintosh. There was a vast deal of splendid talent in England in Byron's time; and we had better not ask too curiously, Who are the men who supply its place now? Two remarkable books-Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe,' and the 'Table-Talk' of Coleridge-have appeared since Byron's time. Both are too fresh in remembrance to demand much notice. Eckermann's shows us that the riches of Goethe's mind flowed as readily from his tongue as his pen. He spoke freely on the deepest, and playfully on the slightest subjects; sometimes saying a wise thing, and sometimes a good, thing. Such a book irresistibly impresses us as coming fresher from the heart than any merely literary work. Nothing can supersede the value and importance of the original forces of nature; and the force of oral communication is one of these. The The conversation of Coleridge-latterly, at least-was sometimes of the nature of monologue, or even reverie, and cloudy with mystic magnificence; but unquestionably enough exists in his Table-Talk to prove that substantial thought and free,lucid, brighthued expression abounded in his conversation as they abound in his writings. We presume to assign it a place among the best; yet how few are good books of the kind after all! We have looked for them among the records of the wise and the foolish, the witty and the dull, the famous and the little known, and cannot help feeling that after all the Literature of Conversation plays a poor part in literary history. When we consider how much good talk has been lost, while so much bad writing has been preserved, we are inclined almost to be angry; and are scarcely consoled by knowing that the spoken wisdom has not altogether failed of its purpose, though it is less easy to show the channels by which it has enriched humanity than to trace the influence of the thought which remains embodied in print and paper. Conversation is at a low ebb in England at present. The higher belles-lettres of an age are admitted to be exponents of its manners, and we find the complaint made by Mr. Disraeli, and testified to by Mr. Thackeray. How small a part is played by conversation in our best novels! How rare is an elegant and familiar conversational style in our contemporary literature, which in that respect is far behind the literature of the time of Queen Anne! Who really converses at a conversazione? and has not Mr. Carlyle suggested that each Lion should have a label on him, like a decanter, that you might learn his name and ascertain those pretensions which will certainly not be manifested by anything you hear from him? The action of the press is one great cause of this colloquial inferiority. Newspapers, novels, magazines, reviews, Punch,' gather up the intellectual elements of our life, like so many electric machines drawing electricity from the atmosphere, into themselves. Everything is recorded and discussed in print, and subjects have lost their freshness long before friends have assembled for the evening. Music is more cultivated, though this is rather an effect than a cause-a device to fill up a painful vacuity; dinners are late and large, and the 'Mahogany' is an extinct institution. For the social dulness of the majority of men of letters the author of Coningsby' accounts with a fatal plausibility, when he tells us that they hoard their best thoughts for their publishers. To this, however, there are striking exceptions, and it may be urged that some of them are shy. Still taken altogether, the genial converse which marked the old tavern life "-those -those lyric feasts Made at the Sun, The Dog, the triple Tun'-Herrick. -the life led in rare Ben's time, then in Steele's, afterwards in Boswell's-belongs to tradition and to the past. Here and there, among authors, there is a diseur de bon-mots; but he is talked of as an exception and a wonder, just as here and there, among the circles of high Whiggery, there is a conversationist of the old Mackintosh school, lettered, luminous, and long-memoried. But these are the remains of the last generation, and where are their rising successors? Where there is talk of a superior character, it appears to affect the epigrammatic form; and this is an unhealthy sign. If there were no other objection, how rarely can it avoid that appearance of self-consciousness and effort which is fatal to all elegance and ease! The epigrammatic is a valuable element, but should never predominate; since good conversation flows from a happy union of all the powers. To approximate to this, a certain amount of painstaking is necessary; and though artifice is detestable, we must submit that talk may be as legitimately made a subject of care and thought as any other part of a man's humanity, and that it is ridiculous to send your mind abroad in a state of slovenliness while you bestow on your body the most refined care. We have no wish to let loose a troop of Conversation Browns' on the dining-rooms and drawing-rooms of England. On the contrary, we feel intensely the social misery which a single Bore, with a powerful memory and a fluent tongue, can inflict on a large and respectable private circle. Compared with such a pest the worst book is a trifle, since it can be laid on the shelf; but he how can he be ejected? You cannot, like Sir Philip Francis, take him by the throat; you can only have recourse to the mingled resignation and pleasantry which Horace exhibited in a similarly terrible position in the Sacred Way; for the Bore was known to the ancients'-as when was he not known?-and in all ages has honestly believed himself a very entertaining fellow. Alas! he must learn to be silent before he can learn to talk; the old crop must be pared from the soil and burnt, the ground must be well broken up, carefully tilled, and entirely re-sown, before he can become a profitable member of society. But as this is a discipline which could only be practised by the wise, and is beyond the capacity of a prater, we must be content with recommending to him, and even this we are sure in vain, the remark of an old writer, that nature has created man with two ears and but one tongue. ART. ART. II.-1. Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile Offenders. By Mary Carpenter. London. 1851. 2. Juvenile Delinquents, their Condition and Treatment. By Mary Carpenter. London. 1853. 3. Mettray: a Lecture read before the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. By Robert Hall, M.A., Recorder of Doncaster. London. 1854. 4. An Act for the better Care and Reformation of Youthful Offenders in Great Britain. 17 & 18 Vict. c. 86. 5. A Collection of Papers, Pamphlets, and Speeches on Reformatories, and the various views held on the subject of Juvenile Crime and its Treatment. Edited by Jelinger Symons, Esq. London. 1855. THER HERE is hardly, perhaps, a subject, the war excepted, which occupies a larger share of attention at the present time than Reformatory Schools. To use a familiar expression, they are becoming quite the rage; and we may look for a series of those peculiar demonstrations in their favour by which the British public are in the habit of displaying their interest in such philanthropic undertakings as they are disposed to encourage. We have not, indeed, yet reached the stage of reformatory bazaars, reformatory balls, and reformatory private theatricals; but now that we have got as far as that of dinners, the others will probably follow. The public sentiment, in short, is ripening fast; let us only hope that the public knowledge, to the imperfections of which a high authority drew attention a twelvemonth ago,* is gaining ground in something like an equal proportion. We are far from desiring to undervalue the importance of a prevailing sympathy with the reformatory movement. We look upon that movement as one of the utmost national consequence, which is likely, if rightly directed, to be productive of most beneficial results; and we are not insensible to the advantages which its promoters must derive from having the tide of feeling in their favour instead of against them. But though a moderate amount of support is necessary to set their schemes fairly afloat, there is danger of no inconsiderable kind in an overwhelming and ill-guided flood of popularity; and it is quite possible that some of those who have hitherto been working their way la *See Mr. M. D. Hill's letter to Lord Brougham, Dec. 18, 1854, republished in Mr. Symons's Collection:- I have been led to doubt whether the public sentiment upon this great question is not considerably in advance of public knowledge.' boriously |