Mr.Pitt talked, and his talk was fascinating.

Mr.
Burke's conversation was rambling, but splendid and instructive beyond comparison." Let me add, that the finest genius of our times, is also the most delightful man; he is that rarest among the rare of human beings, whom to have known is nearly to adore; whom to have seen, to have heard, forms an era in our life; whom youth remembers with enthusiasm, and whose presence the men and women of "the world" feel like a dream from which they would not awaken.

His _bonhomie_ attaches our hearts to him by its simplicity; his legendary conversation makes us, for a moment, poets like himself.[A] [Footnote A: This was written under the inspiration of a night's conversation, or rather listening to Sir WALTER SCOTT .-- I cannot bring myself to erase what now, alas! has closed in the silence of a swift termination of his glorious existence.] But that deficient agreeableness in social life with which men of genius have been often reproached, may really result from the nature of those qualities which conduce to the greatness of their public character.

A thinker whose mind is saturated with knowledge on a particular subject, will be apt to deliver himself authoritatively; but he will then pass for a dogmatist: should he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal expression, or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking into pedantry or rising into genius.

Even the fulness of knowledge has its tediousness.