which brought all hearers within the circle of its influence.
J. M. Daniel, Esq., United States Minister at Turin, who knew Poe well during the last years of his life, says of him, “His conversation was the very best we have ever listened to. We have never heard any so suggestive of thought, or any from which one gained so much. On literary subjects it was the essence of correct and profound criticism divested of all formal pedantries and introductory ideas—the kernel clear of the shell. He was not a brilliant talker in the common, after-dinner sense of the word; he was not a maker of fine points, or a frequent sayer of funny things. What he said was prompted entirely by the moment, and seemed uttered for the pleasure of uttering it. In his animated moods he talked with an abstracted earnestness as if he were dictating to an amanuensis, and, if he spoke of individuals, his ideas ran upon their moral and intellectual qualities rather than upon the idiosyncrasies of their active visible phenomena, or the peculiarities of their manner.”
