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;e conversation of authors is not so good as
might be imagined, but such as it is (and with
rare exceptions), it is better than any other. ;e
proof of which is that when you are used to
it, you cannot put up with any other. ;at of
mixed company becomes utterly intolerable—
you cannot sit out a common tea and card party, at least, if they pretend to talk at all. You are
obliged in despair to cut all your old acquaintance who are not au fait on the prevailing and
most smartly contested topics, who are not
imbued with the high gusto of criticism and
I have often repented speaking, but never of
holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC
virtù. You cannot bear to hear a friend whom
you have not seen for many years tell at how
much a yard he sells his laces and tapes, when
he means to move into his next house, when
he heard last from his relations in the coun-
try, whether trade is alive or dead, or whether
Mr. Such-a-one gets to looking old. ;is sort
of neighborly gossip will not go down after the
high-raised tone of literary conversation. ;e
last may be very absurd, very unsatisfactory, and
full of turbulence and heartburnings; but it has
a zest in it which more ordinary topics of news
or family a;airs do not supply. Neither will the
conversation of what we understand by gentle-
men and men of fashion do after that of men of
letters. It is ;at, insipid, stale, and unpro;table
in the comparison. ;ey talk about much the
same things—pictures, poetry, politics, plays—
but they do it worse, and at a sort of vapid sec-
ondhand. ;ey, in fact, talk out of newspapers
and magazines, what we write there. ;ey do
not feel the same interest in the subjects they
a;ect to handle with an air of fashionable con-
descension, nor have they the same knowledge
of them, if they were ever so much in earnest in
displaying it. If it were not for the wine and the
dessert, no author in his senses would accept an
invitation to a well-dressed dinner party, except
out of pure good nature and unwillingness to
disoblige by his refusal. Persons in high life talk
almost entirely by rote. ;ere are certain estab-
lished modes of address and certain answers to
them expected as a matter of course, as a point
of etiquette. ;e studied forms of politeness
do not give the greatest possible scope to an
exuberance of wit or fancy. ;e fear of giving
o;ense destroys sincerity, and without sincer-
ity there can be no true enjoyment of society,
nor unfettered exertion of intellectual activity.
;ose who have been accustomed to live with
the great are hardly considered as conversible
persons in literary society. ;ey are not to be
talked with, any more than puppets or echoes.
;ey have no opinions but what will please,
and you naturally turn away, as a waste of time
and words, from attending to a person who just
before assented to what you said, and whom
you ;nd, the moment after, from something
that unexpectedly or perhaps by design drops
from him, to be of a totally di;erent way of
thinking. ;is bush ;ghting is not regarded as
fair play among scienti;c men. As fashionable
conversation is a sacri;ce to politeness, so the
conversation of low life is nothing but rude-
ness. ;ey contradict you without giving a rea-
son, or if they do, it is a very bad one—swear,
talk loud, repeat the same thing ;fty times over,
get to calling names, and from words proceed
to blows. You cannot make companions of ser-
vants, or persons in an inferior station in life.
You may talk to them on matters of business,
and what they have to do for you (as lords
talk to bruisers on subjects of fancy, or coun-
try squires to their grooms on horse racing) but
out of that narrow sphere, to any general topic,
you cannot lead them; the conversation soon
;ags, and you go back to the old question, or
are obliged to break up the sitting for want of
ideas in common. ;e conversation of authors
is better than that of most professions. It is bet-
ter than that of lawyers, who talk nothing but
double entendre; than that of physicians, who
