On the question being started, A---- said, "I suppose the two first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?" In this A----, as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B----'s face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. "Yes, the greatest names," he stammered out hastily, "but they were not persons--not persons."--"Not persons?" said A----, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. "That is," rejoined B----, "not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the _Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see any one _bodily_ for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?"--"Ay," retorted A----, "there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?"--"No," said B----, "neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantlepieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian's band and gown."--"I shall guess no more," said A----. "Who is it, then, you would like to see 'in his habit as he lived,' if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?" B---- then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this A---- laughed outright, and conceived B---- was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. B---- then (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago;--how time slips!) went on as follows. "The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit: my