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The "sparkle" evaporates while the "anecdote" is left. But, though what Mr. Pinto called "Anecdotage" is deplorable, a repartee is always delightful: and, while by no means inclined to admit the general inferiority of contemporary conversation to that of the last generation, I am disposed to think that in the art of repartee our predecessors excelled us.
"Beyond the sphere of time, And sin, and grief's control, Serene in changeless prime Of body and of soul." To write of one's own "adventures among books" may be to provide anecdotage more or less trivial, more or less futile, but, at least, it is to write historically.
"Well, he tell anecdotes; he has just been telling one; Granville likes anecdotes; they amuse him, and he likes to be amused: that is all he cares about. I hate anecdotes, and I always get away when conversation falls into, what Pinto calls, its anecdotage." "You do not like to be amused?" "Not too much; I like to be interested."
But, philosophical defects apart, they are excellent lectures. They abound in miscellaneous knowledge and out-of-the-way reading, and they bristle with illustrations which have passed into the common anecdotage of mankind.
Where Arnold Jacks was in company, there could be no dullness. Alone with his host and hostess, Otway would have found the occasion rather solemn, and have wished it over, but Arnold's melodious voice, his sprightly discussion and anecdotage, his frequent laughter, charmed the guest into self-oblivion. "You are no doubt a Home Ruler, Mr. Otway," observed Arnold, soon after they were seated.
There were to be found representatives of all nationalities English, Dutch, Irish, Scotch, German, Norwegian, French, etc. Men of wealth, of high social standing and education were there, sleeping in the same "bed," playing cards and competing in "anecdotage" with the sons of toil. From the very beginning of the siege the Town Guard had had to "rough it" in rations.
He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, had he lived to ninety, that they should ever have been disparaged as symptoms of what has been called "anecdotage." Some fragments of his talk have been preserved by the same hand.
About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of the anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred of personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he would say when alarmed by effusive strangers.
Beethoven save in the C sharp minor and several other sonatas was not sympathetic. Schubert he found rough, Weber, in his piano music, too operatic and Schumann he dismissed without a word. He told Heller that the "Carneval" was really not music at all. This remark is one of the curiosities of musical anecdotage.
One could see, even before he mentioned it, that he had gone to an ivy-clad public school in its anecdotage, with magnificent traditions, aristocratic associations, and no chemical laboratories, and proceeded thence to a venerable college in the very ripest Gothic. Few books he had younger than a thousand years; of these, Yarrow and Ellis and good pre-Methodist sermons made the bulk.
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