out that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not
wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort
wherein pleasure lies.

The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call Spring-Heel'd
Jack.[13] I say so, because I never knew anyone who mingled so largely
the possible ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the
fourth man necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack
is that madman. I know not what is more remarkable; the insane
lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence of his language,
or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of
the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken
god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken
kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so,
in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions
inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a
triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct
puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness,
such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur
him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the required
character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in
question. I can fancy nothing to compare with the _vim_ of these
impersonations, the strange scale of language, flying from Shakespeare
to Kant, and from Kant to Major Dyngwell[14]--

"As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument--"

the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant
particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and bathos,
each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired
disorder of their combination. A talker of a different calibre, though
belonging to the same school, is Burly.[15] Burly is a man of great
presence; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a
grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that
his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the
same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned
to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic
in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this
impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands,
he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his
attitude of mind is