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There is no society, however distinguished, in which Grotait would not have been accepted as a polished and admirable converser. Add to this that he had an art, which was never quite common, but is now becoming rare, of making his guests feel his friends for the time, at all events.
A woman who looks the converser in the eyes, and does not allow her glance to wander and become distrait, and who does not interrupt before the recital is finished, can be sure of popularity with both men and women. Give both your son and daughter confidence in themselves and belief in their power to achieve.
She was perhaps only a little less irritating than the man who became so unconscious in the habit of inattention that on one occasion his converser had scarcely finished when he began abstractedly: "Yes, very odd, very odd," and told the identical anecdote all over again.
But I think that I must have been half-consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I tried to persuade myself that shooting was almost an intellectual employment; it required so much skill to judge where to find most game and to hunt the dogs well. One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was memorable from meeting there Sir J. Mackintosh, who was the best converser I ever listened to.
Even vehement hyperbole, which is nearly always a disfigurement in written prose, may become impressive or delightful, when it harmonises with the voice, the glance, the gesture of a fervid and exuberant converser.
"From that hour, the young colonel's fortune was made. He was appointed one of the gentlemen of the chamber to his Majesty, and distinguished by almost daily marks of royal intimacy. His qualities eminently fitted him for the tone of the society he lived in; he was a most witty converser, a good musician, and had, moreover, a very handsome person, gifts not undervalued at Saint-Germain.
The unconsciousness is what constitutes the crime; for conscious interruption ceases to be interruption. The moment a good talker is aware of having broken into the speech of his converser, he forestalls interruption by waiting to hear what was about to be said.
You never know what are the real sentiments of a good converser, or at least it is very difficult to discover to what extent he entertains them. His politeness is inconsistent with energy. For forming a good converser, good taste and extensive information and accomplishment are the principal requisites, to which must be added an easy and elegant delivery and a well-toned voice.
While he is best known in literary history as the great converser whose full length portrait is drawn by Boswell, Johnson left the marks of his influence on much of the prose written within nearly a hundred years after his death. On the whole, this influence has, for the following reasons, been bad. First, he loved a ponderous style in which there was an excess of the Latin element.
And if, as a converser, I were to compare him with Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues of his great disciple, I think that I should have the assent of that eminently valued friend of Tennyson's, whose long labour of love has conferred English citizenship upon Plato.
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