breadth space between any
two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or
out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease,
with point, with elegance, and without "spinning the thread of his
verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He may be said to
weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the
glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his
sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and are
equally transparent. His style of eloquence, indeed, is remarkable for
neatness, for correctness, and epigrammatic point; and he has applied
this as a standard to his written compositions, where the very same
degree of correctness and precision produces, from the contrast between
writing and speaking, an agreeable diffuseness, freedom, and animation.
Whenever the Scotch advocate has appeared at the bar of the English
House of Lords, he has been admired by those who were in the habit of
attending to speeches there, as having the greatest fluency of language
and the greatest subtlety of distinction of any one of the profession.
The law-reporters were as little able to follow him from the extreme
rapidity of his utterance as from the tenuity and evanescent nature of
his reasoning.

Mr. Jeffrey's conversation is equally lively, various, and instructive.
There is no subject on which he is not _au fait_: no company in which he
is not ready to scatter his pearls for sport. Whether it be politics, or
poetry, or science, or anecdote, or wit, or raillery, he takes up his
cue without effort, without preparation, and appears equally incapable
of tiring himself or his hearers. His only difficulty seems to be not
to speak, but to be silent. There is a constitutional buoyancy and
elasticity of mind about him that cannot subside into repose, much less
sink into dulness. There may be more original talkers, persons who
occasionally surprise or interest you more; few, if any, with a more
uninterrupted flow of cheerfulness and animal spirits, with a greater
fund of information, and with fewer specimens of the _bathos_ in their
conversation. He is never absurd, nor has he any favourite points
which he is always bringing forward. It cannot be denied that there is
something bordering on petulance of manner, but it is of that least
offensive kind which may be accounted for from merit and from success,
and implies no exclusive pretensions nor the leas