the table, as if they had been "let in" (to use Dandie's phrase,) by Monsieur Viard,-knowing in sauces, and delightfully reviewing every glass before they would suffer it to go down. It put me in mind of some lines of my friend Wastle. 'Tis a bookseller that speaks- "The days of Tonson, Lintot, Curll, are over, The time's gone by when we our coaches kept, Too glad if cantos two could fill two bellies- Unless the quire was covered-Happy fellows! The introduction of the claret and desert made, for a long time, very little alteration in the subject matter of the discourse; but by degrees the natural feelings and interests of the company did begin to shine through the cloud of babillage, and various matters, in which I was much better pleased to hear their opinions, were successively tabled-none of them, how * Modern Dunciad, Canto II, MS. ever, with the least appearance of what the Scotch very expressively call fore-thought. Every thing went on with the utmost possible facility, and, in general, with a very graceful kind of lightness. The whole tone of Mr Jeffrey's own conversation, indeed, was so pitched, that a proser, or a person at all ambitious, in the green-room phrase, to make an ef fect, would undoubtedly have found himself most grievously out of place. Amidst all this absence of "preparation," however, (for it is impossible to talk of conversation without using French words),-I have never, I believe, heard so many ideas thrown out by any man in so short a space of time, and apparently with such entire negation of exertion. His conversation acted upon me like the first delightful hour after taking opium. The thoughts he scattered so readily about him (his words, rapid, and wonderfully rapid as they are, appearing to be continually panting after his conceptions)—his thoughts, I say, were at once so striking, and so just, that they took in succession entire possession of my imagination, and yet with so felicitous a tact did he forbear from expressing any one of these too fully, that the reason was always kept in a pleas ing kind of excitement, by the endeavour more It is thoroughly to examine their bearings, quite impossible to listen to him for a moment, without recalling all the best qualities of his composition-and yet I suspect his conversation is calculated to leave one with even a higher idea of his mind, at least of its fertility, than the best of his writings. I have heard some men display more profoundness of reflection, and others a much greater command of the conversational picturesque-but I never before witnessed any thing to be compared with the blending together of apparently little consistent powers in the whole strain of his discourse. Such a power, in the first place, of throwing away at once every useless part of the idea to be discussed, and then such a happy redundancy of imagination to present the essential and reserved part in its every possible relation, and point of view-and all this connected with so much of the plain sçavoir faire of actual existence, and such a thorough scorn of mystification, it is really a very wonderful intellectual coalition. The largeness of the views suggested by his speculative understanding, and the shrewdness with which his sound and close judgment seems to scrutinize them after they are suggested these alone would be sufficient to make his conversation one of the most remarkable things in the world. But then he invests all this ground-work with such a play of fancy, wit, sarcasm, persiflage, every thing in that way except humour-which again, were they united in any person entirely devoid either of the depth or the justness of Jeffrey's intellect, would unquestionably render that person one of the most fascinating of all possible companions. The Stagyrite, who places his summum bonum in having one's faculties kept at work, would certainly have thought himself in Elysium, had he been so unfortunate as to discuss a flask of Chian in company with Mr Jeffrey. The mere animal spirits of the man are absolutely miraculous. When one considers what a life of exertion he has led for these last twenty years; how his powers have been kept on the rack such a length of time with writing, and concocting, and editing reviews on the one hand, and briefs, and speeches, and journeys, and trials, and cross-questionings, and the whole labyrinth of barristership on the other-one cannot help being quite thunderstruck on finding that he has still reserved such a large fund of energy which he can afford and delight to lavish, when even the comparative repose of his mind would be more than enough to please and satisfy every one. His vigour seems to be a perfect widow's cruise, bubbling for ever upwards, and refusing to be exhausted; swelling and spreading till all the vessels of the neighbourhood are saturated, and more than saturated, with the endless unwearied irrigation of its superfluous richness. Mr Playfair was the only other person whose conversation made any very striking impression on me--but indeed this might well be the case, without the least reflection on the talents of those present. This gentleman's mode of talking is just as different as possible from his friend's-it is quietly, simply, unaffectedly sensible, and that is all one thinks of it at first--but by degrees he says things, which although at the moment he utters them, they do not produce any very startling effect, have the power to keep one musing on them for a long time after he stops-so that, even if one were not told who he is, I believe one would have no difficulty in discovering him to be a great man. The gravity of his years-the sweet unassuming gentleness of his behaviour-and the calm way in which he gave utterance to thoughts, about |