"DE STAEL."]
[Footnote 6:
"Byron," writes Sir Walter Scott, in a hitherto unpublished note,
"occasionally said what are called good things, but never studied for
them. They came naturally and easily, and mixed with the comic or
serious, as it happened. A professed wit is of all earthly companions
the most intolerable. He is like a schoolboy with his pockets stuffed
with crackers.
"No first-rate author was ever what is understood by a 'great
conversational wit'. Swift's wit in common society was either the
strong sense of a wonderful man unconsciously exerting his powers, or
that of the same being wilfully unbending, wilfully, in fact,
degrading himself. Who ever heard of any fame for conversational wit
lingering over the memory of a Shakespeare, a Milton, even of a Dryden
or a Pope?
"Johnson is, perhaps, a solitary exception. More shame to him. He was
the most indolent great man that ever lived, and threw away in his
talk more than he ever took pains to embalm in his writings.
"It is true that Boswell has in great measure counteracted all this.
But here is no defence. Few great men can expect to have a Boswell,
and none 'ought' to wish to have one, far less to trust to having one.
A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest only that
his valet may occasionally show off in them; no, nor yet strut about
in them in his chamber, only that his valet may puff him and his
finery abroad.
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