It was only in talk, as I have said, that all the many lights and colours of this richly compounded spirit could be seen in full play. He would begin no matter how—in early days often with a jest at his own absurd garments, or with the recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, or with a rhapsody of analytic delight over some minute accident of beauty or expressiveness that had struck his observation, and would have escaped that of everybody else, in man, woman, child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood and variety. A hundred fictitious characters would be invented, differentiated, and launched on their imaginary careers; a hundred ingenious problems of conduct and cases of honour would be set and solved, in a manner often quite opposed to conventional precept; romantic voyages would be planned and followed out in vision, with a thousand incidents, to all the corners of our own planet and of others; the possibilities of life and art would be illuminated with glancing search-lights of bewildering range and penetration, the most sober argument alternating with the maddest freaks of fancy, high poetic eloquence with coruscations of insanely apposite slang—the earthiest jape anon shooting up into the empyrean and changing into the most ethereal fantasy—the stalest and most vulgarised forms of speech gaining brilliancy and illuminating power from some hitherto undreamt-of application—and all the while an atmosphere of goodwill diffusing itself from the speaker, a glow of eager benignity and affectionate laughter emanating from his presence, till every one about him seemed to catch something of his own gift and inspiration. This sympathetic power of inspiring others was the special and distinguishing note of Stevenson’s conversation. He would keep a houseful or a single companion entertained all day, and day after day and half the nights, yet never seemed to dominate the talk or absorb it; rather he helped every one about him to discover and to exercise unexpected powers of their own. The point could hardly be better brought out than it is in a fragment which I borrow from Mr. Henley of an unpublished character-sketch of his friend: ‘I leave his praise in this direction (the telling of Scottish vernacular stories) to others. It is more to my purpose to note that he will discourse with you of morals, music, marbles, men, manners, metaphysics, medicine, mangold-wurzel—_que scays-je_?—with equal insight into essentials and equal pregnancy and felicity of utterance; and that he will stop with you to make mud pies in the first gutter, range in your company whatever heights of thought and feeling you have found accessible, and end by guiding you to altitudes far nearer the stars than you have ever dreamed of footing it; and that at the last he makes you