(1834).
His great intellectual powers were shown to most advantage in society. Rogers (
Table-Talk
, pp. 197, 198) thought him one of the three acutest men he had ever known.
"He had a prodigious memory, and could repeat by heart more of Cicero than you could easily believe.... I never met a man with a fuller mind than Mackintosh,—such readiness on all subjects, such a talker."
"Till subdued by age and illness," wrote Sydney Smith (Life of Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 500), "his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with."
As in political life, so in society, he was too much of the lecturer. Ticknor (
Life
, vol. i. p. 265) thought him "a little too precise, a little too much made up in his manners and conversation." But on all sides there is evidence to confirm the testimony of Rogers (
Table-Talk
, p. 207) that he was a man "who had not a particle of envy or jealousy in his nature."