intellectual form has a charm not unhealthy; and it gives
new lights on character more often favorable than unfavorable.

There is no difference, between enjoying this personal talk and enjoying
_The Mill on the Floss_ or books of biography. Boswell, in his _Life of
Johnson_, and Mrs. Thrale, in her _Letters_, were inveterate gossips
about the great man. And what an incomparable little tattler was Fanny
Burney--Madame d'Arblay! Lord William Lennox, in his _Drafts on My
Memory_, is full of irrepressible and fascinating _memorabilia_, from
the story of General Bullard's salad-dressing to important dramatic
history connected with the theater of his time. The _Spectator_ was the
quintessence of gossip in an age of gossip and good conversation. We
could go a great deal further back to the gossips of Theocritus, who are
as living and life-like as if we had just met them in the park. All
biography is a putting together of trifles which in the aggregate make
up the engrossing life-stories of men and women of former and
contemporary preeminence. It is to the gossips of all ages that we owe
much of value in literary history.

Without the personal interest in the affairs of others which makes
gossip possible, there would be no fellowship or warmth in life; social
intercourse and conversation would be inhuman and lifeless. Mr. Benson
in his essay "Conversation" tells us that an impersonal talker is likely
to be a dull dog. Mr. Henry van Dyke says that the quality of
talkability does not mark a distinction among things; that it denotes a
difference among people. And Chateaubriand, in his _Memoirs
d'Outre-tombe_, confides to us that he has heard some very pleasant
reports become irksome and malicious in the mouths of ill-disposed
verbal historians.

One can interest one's self in the dramatic incidents in the lives of
one's acquaintances without ventilating or vilifying their character.
Gossip is capable of a more genial purpose than traducing people. It is
the malignity which turns gossip into scandal against which temperate
conversationalists revolt; the sort of thing which Sheridan gibbeted in
his celebrated play, _The School for Scandal_:

"Give me the papers, (lisp)--how bold and free!
Last night Lord L. was caught with Lady D.!
. . . . . . . .
"So strong, so swift, the monster there's no gagging:
Cut scandal's head off, still the tongue is wagging."

But this is scandal, not gossip