of wrangling this way, they invented a kind of argument, which is not reducible to any mood or figure in Aristotle. It was called the Argumentum Basilinum (others write it Bacilinum or Baculinum), which is pretty well expressed in our English word club-law. When they were not able to refute their antagonist, they knocked him down. It was their method, in these polemical debates, first to discharge their syllogisms, and afterwards betake themselves to their clubs, until such time as they had one way or other confounded their gainsayers. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 239. Mr. Bayle compares the answering of an immethodical author to the hunting of a duck: when you have him full in your sight, he gives you the slip and becomes invisible. ADDISON. He is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own blunders, and mistakes the sense of those he would confute. ADDISON. The harshness of reasoning is not a little softened and smoothed by the effusions of mirth and pleasantry. ADDISON. To think everything disputable is a proof of a weak mind and captious temper. BEATTIE. The captious turn of an habitual wrangler deadens the understanding, sours the temper, and hardens the heart. BEATTIE. I cannot fall out, or contemn a man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection: for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable_natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of passion so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined: for though they be amply proposed they are scarce at all handled, they do so swell with unnecessary digressions and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. SIR T. BROWNE. In order to keep that temper which is so difficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may please to consider, that nothing can be more unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with another because he is not of your opinion. The interests, education, and means by which men attain their knowledge, are so very different, that it is impossible they should all think alike; and he has at least as much reason to be angry with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep❘ yourself cool, it may be of service to ask yourself fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biasses of education and interest your adversary may possibly have? BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 197. Avoid as much as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties towards each other: and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavour to put an end to it by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such a conversation hubbub once by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat out of company what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily hear all that was said. LORD CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Son, Oct. 19, 1748. Men of many words sometimes argue for the sake of talking; men of ready tongues frequently dispute for the sake of victory; men in public life often debate for the sake of opposing the ruling party, or from any other motive than the love of truth. CRABB: Synonymes. The precipitancy of disputation, and the stir and noise of passions that usually attend it, must needs be prejudicial to verity: its calm insinuations can no more be heard in such a bustle than a whistle among a crowd of sailors in a storm. GLANVILL. The sparks of truth being forced out of contention, as the sparks of fire out of the collision of flint and steel. HAKEWILL. However some may affect to dislike controversy, it can never be of ultimate disadvantage to the interests of truth or the happiness of manmultitude of ridiculous opinions will no doubt kind. Where it is indulged to its full extent, a be obtruded upon the public; but any ill influence they may produce cannot continue long, as they are sure to be opposed with at least equal ability and that superior advantage which is ever attendant on truth. The colours with which wit or eloquence may have adorned a false system will gradually die away, sophistry be detected, and everything estimated at length ROBERT HALL: according to its value. On the Right of Public Discussion. Suspense of judgment and exercise of charity were safer and seemlier for Christian men than the hot pursuit of these controversies. HOOKER. It is impossible to fall into any company where there is not some regular and established subordination, without finding rage and vehemence produced only by difference of sentiments about things in which neither of the disputants have any other interest, than what proceeds from their mutual unwillingness to give way to any opinion that may bring upon them the disgrace of being wrong. I have heard of one that, having advanced some erroneous doctrines of philosophy, refused to see the experiments by which they were con futed. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 31. It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant, to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent. When we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated our confidence with success, we are naturally inclined to pursue the same train of reasoning, to establish some collateral truth, to remove some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the whole comprehension of our system. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 66. Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion connected with liberty, and, by an eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of contradiction. This exactness is absolutely necessary in inquiries after philosophical knowledge, and in controversies about truth. LOCKE. There is no such way to give defence to absurd doctrines, as to guard them round about with legions of obscure and undefined words; which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than the fortLOCKE. resses of fair warriors. It happens in controversial discourses as it does in the assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no farther enquiry whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose. LOCKE. A way that men ordinarily use to force others to submit to their judgments, and receive their opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to admit what they allege as a proof, or to assign a better. LOCKE. Men that do not perversely use their words, or on purpose set themselves to cavil, seldom mistake the signification of the names of simple ideas. LOCKE. There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies,— his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds more firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic, they teach that contraries laid together more evidently appear it follows, then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth. MILTON. Having newly left those grammatic shallows, where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words, on the sudden are transported to be tost and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy. MILTON. What Tully says of war may be applied to disputing, it should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace: but generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,-their whole delight is in the pursuit; and a disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare. POPE: Thoughts on Various Subjects. The like censurings and despisings have embittered the spirits, and whetted both the tongues and pens, of learned men one against another. SANDERSON. It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together; because it gives his answerer double work. SWIFT. It will happen continually that rightly to distinguish between two words will throw great light upon some controversy in which words play a principal part; nay, will virtually put an end to that controversy altogether. R. C. TRENCH. It is to diffuse a light over the understanding, in our enquiries after truth, and not to furnish the tongue with debate and controversy. DR. I. WATTS. pute in ten which is managed in those schools of politics, where, after the three first sentences, the question is not entirely lost. Our disputants put me in mind of the scuttle-fish, that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him until he becomes invisible. The man who does not know how to methodize his thoughts, has always, to borrow a phrase from the Dispensary," a barren superfluity of words:" the fruit is lost amidst the exuberance of leaves. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 476. The superiority of Sir James Mackintosh to Jeffrey in conversation was then very manifest. His ideas succeeded each other much more rap Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil. To give up everything worth contending about, in order to prevent hurtful contentions, is, for the sake of extirpating noxious weeds, to condemn the field to perpetual sterility. Yet, if the principle that it is an evil only to be incurred when necessary for the sake of some important good, were acted upon, the two classes of controversies mentioned by Bacon would certainly be excluded. The first, controversy on subjects too deep and mys-idly; his expressions were more brief and terse, terious, is indeed calculated to gender strife. For, in a case where correct knowledge is impossible to any and where all are, in fact, in the wrong, there is but little likelihood of agreement like men who should rashly venture to explore a strange land in utter darkness, they will be scattered into a thousand devious paths. The second class of subjects that would be excluded by this principle, are those which relate to matters too minute and trifling. WHATELY : his repartee most felicitous. Jeffrey's great Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Unity in rien approfondir," was his practice, as it is of CONVERSATION. Conversation, like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its natural good sense and beauty. At present, therefore, an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behaviour, are the height of good breeding. The fashionable world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 119. Conversation with men of a polite genius is another method for improving our natural taste. It is impossible for a man of the greatest parts to consider anything in its whole extent, and in all of its variety of lights. Every man, besides those general observations which are to be made upon an author, forms several reflections that are peculiar to his own manner of thinking; so that conversation will naturally furnish us with hints which we did not attend to, and make us enjoy other men's parts and reflections as well as our own. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 409. Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. I who hear a thousand coffee-house debates every day, am very sensible of this want of method in the thoughts of my honest countrymen. There is not one dis all men in whom the real conversational talent exists, and where it has been trained to perfection by frequent collision, in polished society, with equal or superior men and elegant and charming women. Jeffrey, in conversation, was like a skilful swordsman flourishing his weapon in the air; while Mackintosh, with a thin, sharp rapier, in the middle of his evolutions, ran him through the body. SIR A. ALISON: History of Europe, 1815-1852. Some in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit, in being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment, in discerning what is true; as if it were a praise to know what might be said, and not what should be thought. Some have certain common-places and themes, wherein they are good, and want variety; which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious; and, when it is once perceived, ridiculous. LORD BACON : Essay XXXIII., Of Discourse. and content much; but especially if he apply He that questioneth much shall learn much, his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh; for he shall give them occasion to please themselves in speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge: but let his questions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a poser; and let him be sure to leave other men their turns to speak: nay, if there be any that would reign and take up all the time, let him find means to take them off, and to bring others on; as musicians use to do with those that dance too long galliards. . . . Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeable to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words, or in good order. LORD BACON : Essay XXXIII., Of Discourse. Whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and discoursing with another; he marshalleth his thoughts more orderly, he seeth how they look when they are turned into words. LORD BACON. Such facetiousness is not unreasonable or unlawful which ministereth harmless divertisement and delight to conversation; harmless, I say, that is, not intrenching upon piety, nor infringing charity or justice, not disturbing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious, as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful, pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society, then it is not inconvenient or unprofitable. If for these ends we may use other recreations, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other instruments of sense and motion, why may we not so well accommodate our organs of speech and interior sense? Why should those games which excite our wit and fancies be less reasonable, since they are performed in a manly way, and have in them a smack of reason; seeing, also, they may be so managed as not only to divert and please, but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense, conveyed in jocular expression? BARROW. If anything in my conversation has merited your regard, I think it must be the openness and freedom with which I commonly express my sentiments. You are too wise a man not to know that such freedom is not without its use; and that by encouraging it, men of true ability are enabled to profit by hints thrown out by understandings much inferior to their own, and which they who first produce them are, by themselves, unable to turn to the best account. BURKE: To the Comte de Mercey, Aug. 1793. Tasso's conversation was neither gay nor bril liant. Corneille in conversation was so insipid that he never failed in wearying: he did not even speak correctly that language of which he was such a master. Ben Jonson used to sit silent in company and suck his wine and their humours. Southey was stiff, sedate, and wrapped up in asceticism. Addison was good company with his intimate friends, but in mixed company he preserved his dignity by a stiff and reserved silence. Fox in conversation never flagged; his animation and variety were inexhaustible. Dr. Bentley was loquacious. Grotius was talkative. Goldsmith "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." Burke was eminently entertaining, enthusiastic, and interesting in conversation. Curran was a convivial deity: he soared into every region, and was at home in all. Dr. Birch talk like running water. dreaded a pen as he did a torpedo; but he could Dr. Johnson wrote tion his words were close and sinewy; and "if monotonously and ponderously, but in conversatagonist with the butt of it." Coleridge in his his pistol missed fire, he knocked down his anconversation was full of acuteness and originality. Leigh Hunt has been well termed the philosopher of hope, and likened to a pleasant stream in conversation. Carlyle doubts, objects, and constantly demurs. Fisher Ames was a distinguished in the social circle. He possessed powerful and effective orator, and not the less a fluent language, a vivid fancy, and a wellstored memory. A. W. CHAMBERS. One must be extremely exact, clear, and perspicuous in everything one says; otherwise, instead of entertaining or informing others, one only tires and puzzles them. The voice and manner of speaking, too, are not to be neglected; some people almost shut their mouths when they speak, and mutter so, that they are not to be understood; others speak so fast and sputter that they are not to be understood neither; some always speak as loud as if they were talking to deaf people, and others so low that one cannot hear them. All these habits are awkward and disagreeable; and are to be avoided by attention: they are the distinguishing marks of the ordinary people, who have had no care taken of their education. You cannot imagine how necessary it is to mind all these little things; for I have seen many people, with great talents, ill received, for want of having these talents too; and others well received, only from their little talents, and who had no great ones. LORD CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Son, July 25, N. S., 1791. When you find your antagonist beginning to grow warm, put an end to the dispute by some LORD CHESTerfield. genteel badinage. Dante was either taciturn or satirical. Butler was sullen or biting. Gray seldom talked or smiled. Hogarth and Swift were very absentminded in company. Milton was unsociable, and even irritable, when pressed into conversation. Kirwan, though copious and eloquent in public addresses, was meagre and dull in colloquial discourse. Virgil was heavy in conversation. La Fontaine appeared heavy, coarse, and stupid; he could not describe what he had just seen; but then he was the model of poetry. Chaucer's silence was more agreeable than his conversation. Dryden's conversation was slow Conversation is the music of the mind; an and dull, his humour saturnine and reserved. I intel'ectual orchestra, where all the instruments The advantage of conversation is such that, for want of company, a man had better talk to a post than let his thoughts lie smoking and smothering. JEREMY COLLIER. should bear a part, but where none should play together. Each of the performers should have a just appreciation of his own powers; other wise an unskilful noviciate, who might usurp the first fiddle, would infallibly get into a scrape. To prevent these mistakes, a good master of the band will be very particular in the assortment of the performers: if too dissimilar there will be no harmony, if too few there will be no variety, and if too numerous there will be no order: for the presumption of one prater might silence the eloquence of a Burke, or the wit of a Sheridan; as a single kettledrum would drown the finest solo of a Gioniwich or a Jordini. COLTON: Lacon. It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth. Some men envelope themselves in such an impenetrable cloak of silence, that the tongue will afford us no symptoms of the temperament of the mind. Such taciturnity, indeed, is wise if they are fools, but foolish if they are wise; and the only method to form a judgment of these mutes is narrowly to observe when, where, and how they smile. It shows much more stupidity to be grave at a good thing than to be merry at a bad one; and of all ignorance that which is silent is the least productive; for praters may suggest an idea, if they cannot start one. COLTON: Lacon. Were we as eloquent as angels, yet should we please some men, some women, and some children much more by listening than by talking. COLTON: Lacon. We have fixed our view on those uses of conversation which are ministerial to intellectual DE QUINCEY. culture. an understanding man and a rude jester, he presses hard upon me on both sides: his imagi. nation raises up mine to more than ordinary pitch. Jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and a consent of judgment is a quality totally offensive in conference. THOMAS FULLER: The Holy State and the Profane State. Let your words be few, especially when your superiors, or strangers, are present, lest you be tray your own weakness, and rob yourselves of the opportunity which you might otherwise have had, to gain knowledge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those whom you silence by your impertinent talking. . Be careful not to interrupt another when he is speaking: hear him out, and you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better answer. SIR M. HALE. It has been said that the Table-Talk of Selden is worth all the Ana of the Continent. In this I should be disposed to concur; but they are not exactly works of the same class. HALLAM: Lit. Hist. They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation: but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures; in the The ideas of the one other everything is fluid. are as formal and tangible as those of the other are shadowy and evanescent. Sir James Mackintosh walks over the ground; Mr. Coleridge is always flying off from it. The first knows all that has been said upon a subject; the last has something to say that was never said before. The conversation of Sir James Mackintosh has the effect of reading a well-written book; that of his friend is like hearing a bewildering edge; the other is a succession of Sibylline dream. The one is an encyclopædia of knowl leaves. WILLIAM HAZLITT: Spirit of the Age. That conversation may answer the ends for which it was designed, the parties who are to join in it must come together with a determined resolution to please and to be pleased. If a man feels that an east wind has rendered him dull and sulky, he should by all means stay at home till the wind changes, and not be troublesome to his friends: for dulness is infectious, and one sour face will make many, as one cheergentlemen desire to quarrel, it should not be ful countenance is productive of others. If two done in a company met to enjoy the pleasures of conversation. BISHOP GEORGE HORNE: Olla Podrida, No. 7. We hear a great deal of lamentation nowadays, proceeding mostly from elderly people, on the decline of the Art of Conversation among us. Old ladies and gentlemen, with vivid recollections of the charms of society fifty years ago, are constantly asking each other why the great talkers of their youthful days have found no successors in this inferior present time. Where |