“Ay, Niel, and we only burn our fingers with ours,” said Repton, sarcastically.
“Depend upon it,” resumed Rawlins, “as the world grows more practical, you will have less of great convivial display. Agreeability will cease to be the prerogative of first-rate men, but be left to the smart people of society, who earn their soup by their sayings.”
“He's right,” cried Niel, in his shrillest tone. “The age of alchemists is gone; the sleight-of-hand man and the juggler have succeeded him.”
“And were they not alchemists?” exclaimed old Repton, enthusiastically. “Did they not transmute the veriest dross of the earth, and pour it forth from the crucible of their minds a stream of liquid gold?—glorious fellows, who, in the rich abundance of their minds, brought the learning of their early days to illustrate the wisdom of their age, and gave the fresh-heartedness of the schoolboy to the ripe intelligence of manhood.”
“And yet how little have they bequeathed to us!” said Niel.
“Would it were even less,” broke in Repton. “We read the witticism of brilliant conversera in some diary or journal, often ill recorded, imperfectly given, always unaccompanied by the accessories of the scene wherein they occurred. We have not the crash, the tumult, the headlong flow of social intercourse, where the impromptu fell like a thunderbolt, and the bon mots rattled like a fire of musketry. To attempt to convey an impression of these great talkers by a memoir, is like to picture a battle by reading out a list of the killed and wounded.”
“Repton is right!” exclaimed Niel. “The recorded bon mot is the words of a song without the music.”
“And often where it was the melody that inspired the verses,” added Repton, always glad to follow up an illustration.
“After all,” said Rawlins, “the fashion of the day is changed in other respects as well as in conversational excellence. Nothing is like what we remember it!—literature, dress, social habits, oratory. There, for instance, was that young fellow to-day; his speech to the jury,—a very good and sensible one, no doubt,—but how unlike what it would have been some five-and-thirty or forty years ago.”
“It was first-rate,” said Repton, with enthusiasm. “I say it frankly, and 'fas est ab hoste,' for he tripped me up in a point of law, and I have, therefore, a right to applaud him. To tell you the truth,” he added slyly, “I knew I was making a revoke, but I thought none of the players were shrewd enough to detect me.”