artistic purpose, as to that power of vivid and intense conception that made his dreams realities, and his life a dream.
The strange fascination—the unmatched charm of his conversation—consisted in its genuineness. Even Dr. Griswold, who has studiously represented him as cold, passionless, and perfidious, admits that his conversation was at times almost “supra-mortal in its eloquence;” that “his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart.”
These traits are not the possible accompaniments of attributes which Dr. Griswold has elsewhere ascribed to him. As a conversationist we do not remember his equal. We have heard the veteran Landor (called by high authority the best talker in England) discuss with scathing sarcasm the popular writers of the day, convey his political animosities by fierce invectives on the “pre-
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