which they were not strong enough to hold. But his talk, for all its aggressiveness, and for all its tendency to negation, was real talk; not—as with Coleridge—a monologue, nor—as with Macaulay—a lecture. He did not infringe upon other people's conversational freeholds, and he was not, be it always remembered, anecdotal. The man who lived upon "potted stories" inspired him with righteous antipathy.
Perhaps the saddest proof of intellectual inertia, of our failure to meet one another with ease and understanding, is the tendency to replace conversation by story-telling. It is no uncommon thing to hear a man praised as a good talker, when he is really a good raconteur. People will speak complacently of a "brilliant dinner," at which strings of anecdotes, disconnected and illegitimate, have usurped the field, to the total exclusion of ideas. After an entertainment of this order—like a feast of buns and barley sugar—we retire with mental indigestion for a fortnight. That it should be relished betrays the crudeness of social conditions. "Of all the bores," writes De
