irresistibly comic sketch; "you put some question to him, made some suggestive observation; instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out towards an answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers, and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear for setting out; perhaps did at last get under way--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the flame of some radiant new game on this hand or on that into new courses, and ever into new; and before long into all the universe, where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any." He had, indeed, according to the dissatisfied listener, "not the least talent for explaining this or anything to them; and you swam and fluttered on the mistiest, wide, unintelligible deluge of things for most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner." And the few vivid phrases of eulogy which follow seem only to deepen by contrast the prevailing hue of the picture. The "glorious islets" which were sometimes seen to "rise out of the haze," the "balmy sunny islets of the blest and the intelligible, at whose emergence the secondary humming group would all cease humming and hang breathless upon the eloquent words, till once your islet got wrapped in the mist again, and they would recommence humming"--these, it seems to be suggested, but rarely revealed themselves; but "eloquent, artistically expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy recognisable as pious though strangely coloured, were never wanting long; but, in general, you could not call this aimless cloud-capt, cloud-bound, lawlessly meandering discourse, by the name of excellent talk, but only of surprising.... The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left in you at last a very dreary feeling."