Epigrams flowed from his tongue,
brilliant characterisations, admirable judgments. He had "placed"
every one, and literature to him seemed like a great mosaic in
which he knew the position of every cube. He knew all the movements
and tendencies of literature, and books seemed to him to be
important, not because they had a message for the mind and heart,
but because they illustrated a tendency, or were a connecting link
in a chain. He quoted poems I had never heard of, he named authors
I had never read. He did it all modestly and quietly enough, with
no parade, (I want to do him full justice) but with an evidently
growing disappointment to find that he had fallen among savages. I
am sure that his conclusion was that authors of popular novels were
very shallow, ill-informed people, and I am sure I wholly agreed
with him. Good heavens, what a mind the man had, how stored with
knowledge! how admirably equipped! Nothing that he had ever put
away in his memory seemed to have lost its colour or outline; and
he knew, moreover, how to lay his hand upon everything. Indeed, it
seemed to me that his mind was like an emporium, with everything in
the world arranged on shelves, all new and varnished and bright,
and that he knew precisely the place of everything.
Pages:
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84