They were so swingingly set
forth, in such dramatic language, and illustrated here and there by
such luminous bits of acting, that they could only lose in any
reproduction. There were tales of the P. and O. Company, where he
had been an officer; of the East Indies, where in former years he had
lived lavishly; of the Royal Engineers, where he had served for a
period; and of a dozen other sides of life, each introducing some
vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the talk to himself that night,
we were all so glad to listen. The best talkers usually address
themselves to some particular society; there they are kings,
elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and yet be
ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow had a frank, headlong power of
style, and a broad, human choice of subject, that would have turned
any circle in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a Homeric
talker, plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and the people of
which he spoke became readily and clearly present to the minds of
those who heard him. This, with a certain added colouring of
rhetoric and rodomontade, must have been the style of Burns, who
equally charmed the ears of duchesses and hostlers.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90