No measure comes before Parliament
but it has been long ago prepared by the grand jury of the talkers; no
book is written that has not been largely composed by their assistance.
Literature in many of its branches is no other than the shadow of good
talk; but the imitation falls far short of the original in life,
freedom, and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving and taking,
comparing experience and according conclusions. Talk is fluid,
tentative, continually "in further search and progress;" while written
words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden
dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the
truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can
only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and
may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely
aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the
solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the
contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering,
like schoolboys out of school.
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