But to proceed. Apropos of Voltaire saying that to listen to English people talking was to overhear the hissing of serpents, he commented, "and to listen to German was to overhear _k's_ like the scrunching of egg-shells." He had two or three pithy sayings, which came straight home to me and became part of my mental furniture, so much so that I have at times given myself the credit of innovating them. One of these was that the defect of most people--not critics only, but others, _la foule_ in general--is "to impute themselves." I felt this to be at the root of the matter, a profound if humorous extension of the wise man's saw, [Greek: pantôn metron anthrôpos]. He said it often and most seriously. The other I might call the "_elogium vatis_" _par excellence_. It took the form of a caution against "mixing up things that differ," and to this also among his _sententiae_ I assented _quod latius patet_. I think I once used it incidentally to him, and he at once pulled me up. "That's mine." He certainly did so when I asked him his own riddle: "My first's a kind of butter, my second's a kind of liquor, and my whole's a kind of charger." Answer: "Ramrod." And he exclaimed, "That's my riddle."[52] Then there is the old story how the Englishman, wishing to direct the _garçon_ not to let the fire go out, gently growled, "Ne permettez pas sortir le fou," whereupon the _garçon_ locks up the other Englishman. I think it was brought up by Frank Lushington as now told against the Poet, and Tennyson gave us the correct version; originally he had invented it himself of Edmund Lushington when they were in Paris, chaffing his friend's French. But it was a case of biter bit. In the vulgar version I find the Poet with his long hair is made to play the part of the _fou_. Thus far these trifles. I come to _memorabilia_ more precious to me and of larger import. I will head the section _Tennyson and the Classics, English and Other_,