ome of these confidential communications!... The
reader may perhaps think the foregoing a specimen of them:--but indeed he
is mistaken.

I do not know of any greater impertinence, than for an obscure individual
to set about pumping a character of celebrity. "Bring him to me," said a
Doctor Tronchin, speaking of Rousseau, "that I may see whether he has
anything in him." Before you can take measure of the capacity of others,
you ought to be sure that they have not taken measure of yours. They may
think you a spy on them, and may not like their company. If you really
want to know whether another person can talk well, begin by saying a good
thing yourself, and you will have a right to look for a rejoinder. "The
best tennis-players," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "make the best matches."

----------------For wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best
With the best players.

We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, that they are
very stupid people in private. But he was a fool that said so. _Tell me
your company, and I'll tell you your manners._ In conversation, as in
other things, the action and reaction should bear a certain proportion to
each other.--Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, who
are not naturalised even in their native soil. L---- once came down into
the country to see us. He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among
the Goths." The country people thought him an oddity, and did not
understand his jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make
any, while he staid. But when he crossed the country to Oxford, then he
spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well met; and in
the quadrangles, he "walked gowned."

There is a character of a gentleman; so there is a character of a scholar,
which is no less easily recognised. The one has an air of books about him,
as the other has of good-breeding. The one wears his thoughts as the other
does his clothes, gracefully; and even if they are a little old-fashioned,
they are not ridiculous: they have had their day. The gentleman shows, by
his manner, that he has been used to respect from others: the scholar that
he lays claim to self-respect and to a certain independence of opinion.
The one has been accustomed to the best company; the other has passed his
time in cultivating an intimacy with the best authors. There is nothing
forward or vulgar in the behaviour of the one; not