_Lord Sparkish._ Or rather _patter_. _Miss Notable._ Pray, my lord, what is "patter"? _Lord Sparkish._ All sauciness and slang, like the soliloquy of a Cheap Jack. _Mr. Neverout._ Modish conversation, to-day, seems to borrow its diction from the music-hall, and its repartee from the 'bus conductor. _Miss Notable._ Oh fie! Now our "Polite and Ingenious Conversation," as the dear Dean of ST. PATRICK reported it, was vastly different. Did not Mr. SWIFT declare that he defied all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town to equal it in wit, humour, smartness or politeness? _Lady Sparkish._ Yes; yes, indeed! And he had scruples about prostituting "this noble art to mean and vulgar people." _Mr. Neverout._ Egad, the penny daily paper and the sixpenny illustrated weekly have altered all that. "Mean and vulgar people" now write books and journals, as well as read 'em. _Miss Notable._ For my part I don't like dialogues, except upon the stage. They are so mortally dull. _Lady Sparkish._ Nay, but my dear girl, the Dean says, you must remember, "Dialogue is held the best method of inculcating any part of knowledge; and I am confident that public schools will soon be founded for teaching wit and politeness, after my scheme, to young people of quality and fortune." _Mr. Neverout._ Perhaps the present rage for dialogues is the first step in that direction. _Lady Answerall._ Pah! there _are_ no "young persons of quality" now! _Lord Sparkish._ Though plenty of young persons of fortune! _Mr. Neverout._ Quite a different thing, my Lord! In _our_ days School Boards, Labour Members, and American Millionaires had not been invented. CREECH had indeed translated HORACE into the vernacular, but JOWETT had not Englished the Platonic Dialogues for the benefit of Extension Lectures and hack journalists. _Colonel Alwit._ Faith, I could never stomach that inquisitive bore SOCRATES and his dreary dialoguists. That gay, wicked, but debonair dog, LUCIAN, was more to my mind. _Mr. Neverout._ Ah! who of our latter-day dialogue-mongers could equal the smart and really _quite fin-de-siècle_ cynic of SAMOSATA? [Illustration] _Miss Notable._ Well, as TIBBALDS, said:-- "I am no schollard, but I am polite, Therefore be sure I'm no Jacobite." So I've not read your LUCIANS and PLATOS and things. But I like _Gyp_, and _Anthony Hope_. I vow he hath a true touch of "the quality," and he vastly delights me. _Mr. Neverout._ Does he not go nigh to make you blush, now and anon? _Miss Notable._ Blush? Ay, blush like a blue dog. _Lady Smart._ Still I maintain the Town to-day cannot _talk_. _Mr. Neverout._ Any more than it can write letters. _Lady Sparkish._ There is nought _genteel_ in their gabble, nor truly smart in their repartee. _Lord Sparkish._ And they cannot _badiner_ a bit. _Lady Smart._ Like that _dear Bellamour!_ _Miss Notable._ Or that _delightful Lovelace!_ _Lady Smart._ Modern dialogues are _dull!_