wasted. Then he is described as going out, about his parish, intending to continue to think of his son's offence, so that he might keep his anger hot,-red-hot ; remembering however that the evening would come, and that he would say his prayers ; and shaking his head in regret,—in a regret of which he was only half-conscious, though it was very keen, and which he did not attempt to analyse, as he reflected that his rage would hardly be able to survive that ordeal.

Fuller paraphrases the Pauline text as though the sinking sun might carry news to the antipodes in another world of man's revengeful nature; yet would he take the Apostle's meaning rather than his words, with all possible speed to depose our passion; not understanding the text so literally as that we may take leave to be angry till sunset; for then, says Fuller, in the very manner of Sir Thomas Browne, might our wrath lengthen with the days; and men in Greenland, where the day lasts above a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope for revenge.

IN

XXXIX.

SWIFT TO HEAR, SLOW TO SPEAK.

ST. JAMES i. 19.

N exhorting every man to be "swift to hear, slow to speak," St. James has by some been imagined to allude to the silence which Pythagoras imposed upon his disciples. The "allusion" is probably imaginary, and no more. But commentators agree that the words ταχὺς ἐἰς τὸ ἀκοῦσαί, κ.τ.λ., are directed against the intemperate zeal and angry violence of the Jews in maintaining their opinions, to which Horace refers in Sat. I. 4. 412, Ac veluti te Judæi cogemus in hanc concedere turbam. It is, however, with the larger, indeed universal, application of the precept that these pages are concerned; applying them, in the terse form of a saw, to all and sundry whom they may be said to counsel or characterize. We may

in this sense find a parallel in the Book of Proverbs, where it is written that "a fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards." The fool is slow to hear, swift to speak. The wise man is swift to hear, slow to speak. The slowness of the one is the swiftness of the other; and the wisdom of the one is the foolishness of the other.

Seest thou a man that is hasty in words? there is more hope of a fool than of him. Happy is the middle term between such haste and the extremity of one that is dumb, who doth not open his mouth; especially if, as in the Psalmist's case, he becomes even as a man that heareth not, as well. It was because the deaf and dumb artist, Benjamin Ferrers, was pure of life, in part perhaps from his infirmities-in so far at least as the Power that made the Tongue, restrained his lips from lies and guile, and He that made the Hearing, rescued him from siren's song and the like temptations—that Vincent Bourne, in Latin verse which Charles Lamb has Englished, was fain to form and utter the else paradoxical wish,

"Might I but be

As speechless, deaf, and good as he !"

Very like Shakspeare's Gloster is the aside-spoken line, "I hear, yet say not much, but think the more." Very like his Jaques is that cynical forester's reference to the more sociable duke, "I think of as many matters as he; but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them." And very like his Polonius is the counsel that old state craftsman bestows upon his son :

"Give thy thoughts no tongue

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.”

To be a good listener, is, as some (consciously or unconsciously) take it, to be the best of all good company. The wonder we often express, says Dean Swift, at our neighbours keeping dull company, would lessen if we reflected that most people seek companions less to be talked to than to talk.

When Jean-Pierre Camus, Bishop of Belley,-the ecclesiastic Boswell of St. Francis of Sales-expressed his wonder to his

*

patron-saint, if so (in life) the Bishop of Geneva may be called, at women of the great world gathering about him, “for it seems to me you never have much to say to them,”—“ Do you call it nothing," was the reply, "to let them talk as much as they will to me? Most assuredly they care more for ears to listen than words to reply. They talk enough for both sides, and probably they come to me because I am such a good listener; nothing is so delightful to great talkers as a patient hearer." A shrewd observer says that the most brilliant salons have always been created by dexterous listeners: a pleasant house is not a house where one is especially talked to, but where one discovers that one talks more easily than elsewhere. No flattery, it is rightly said, is so delicate as that which consists in a lively perception of the force of every remark you make; nor again is anything more humiliating than the blank indifference which some persons oppose to your most brilliant flashes of genius. Francis Jeffrey, homesick in England, solaced himself with the assurance that nowhere is a good listener more popular than in London. In the same letter we find him regretting the loss of Sir Walter; and he was not only the best of good listeners, but made a point of introducing those good people into more than a few of his fictions. Story-telling Claud Halero fastens with instinct on Mordaunt "as in a favourable state to play the part of listener," and, with the unfailing dexterity peculiar to prosers, contrives to dribble out his tale to double its usual length, by exercising the privilege of unlimited digressions,-so receptive an ear once secured. Alan Fairford, pleading from his first brief, is happy enough to see the presiding judge, Lord Bladderskate, relax the scorn of his features into an expression of profound attention," the highest compliment, and the greatest encouragement, which a judge can render to the counsel addressing him."† Touch

* A GOOD LISTENER is the subject of a previous chapter of instances, from the same pen as the present, to be found in Cues from all Quarters, pp. 236-251.

† A clerical fellow-countryman of Sir Walter's rèmembers feeling awestricken by the intense attention with which " a very great Judge" was

every

wood's tattle, though Jekyl pays not the slightest attention to it, is continued as cheerily as if he had been addressing the most attentive listener in Scotland, whether the favourite nephew of a cross, rich old bachelor, or the aide-de-camp of some old rusty firelock of a general, who tells stories of his last campaign; but Touchwood ironically compliments the insouciant captain on his well-sustained silence, and declares himself happy in having fallen in with a gentleman who hears him so well: "That grave, steady attention of yours reminds me of Elfi Bey-you might talk to him in English, or anything he understood least of—you might have read Aristotle to Elfi, and not a muscle would he stir-give him his pipe, and he would sit on his cushion with a listening air as if he took in word of what you said." At this, Captain Jekyl throws away the remnant of a cigar, with a little movement of pettishness, and begins to whistle an opera air. "There again, now!" exclaims the exasperating and insuppressible but imperturbable nabob," that is just like the Marquis of Roccombole, another dear friend of mine, that whistles all the time you talk to him," --and whose apology was that he learned it in the Reign of Terror, when a man was glad to whistle to show his throat was whole. What makes the Laird of Ellangowan, when estranged from general society, increasingly partial to that of Dominie Sampson, is, that although conversation is out of the question, "the Dominie was a good listener," and succeeded with some tact in uttering certain indistinct murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion of Mr. Bertram's long and winding stories. All that Professor M'Cloud, in a later fiction, wants, is a good listening post, so a rival alleges; but that rival is anon found

"It

wont, in ordinary conversation, to listen to all that was said to him. was the habit of the judgment-seat, acquired through many years of listening, with every faculty awake, to the arguments addressed to him." But when, records this reverend reminiscent, you began to make some statement to him, it was positively alarming to see him look you full in the face, and listen with inconceivable fixedness of attention to all you said. "You could not help feeling that really the small remark you had to make was not worth that great mind's grasping it so intently, as he might have grasped an argument by Follett," or some other bar-leader of the day.

paying his tribute to a new acquaintance: "We had a long and interesting chat on the continuity-of-species question: I found him really very intelligent-a very good conversationist indeed;" the truth of the matter being that the speaker had prosed upon his favourite subject for an hour to his patient victim, who had not comprehended a single word of the whole harangue, but had kept saying, at judicious intervals, “Ah, indeed," "Very curious,"-and by this simple means had acquired a high character with the other as a conversationist. "Yes, really a very good talker indeed; pursues his subject; does not shatter the conversation in the kind of way that so many men do." An essayist on social subjects thinks himself not mistaken in saying that all great talkers are impatient of other talkers, and resent the tax on their attention as a grievance and severe infliction. The impatience of such a temperament is recognized by signs only too unmistakable, where it is held in the vice of necessity; by sighs, jerks, fidgets, groans, biting of nails, drummings, tappings, yawnings, in various stages of development, as the natural tendency is partially restrained by good manners or allowed full play; by interruptions and exclamations-"Yes, yes!" Well!" And so," ," "And then," "And did he?" and all the interjectional goads to greater dispatch, as a discourser on impatience happily terms them. On the other hand, to quote from an essay on Attention, “there are eyes that invite confidence—'bland,' serene, clear-shining, outlooking eyes, at once patient and intelligent. This is the eye of the good listener. He keeps your pace; he goes with the fluctuations of fact or feeling or argument without effort. You may know you are not wearying him." The essayist's drift is, that men constantly think they like and prize people for their talking, when it is in fact for their listening; and his conclusion. is, that every kindly intelligent man who possesses this accomplishment is certain to win to himself a great social reputation.

66

It is not, as a literary divine observes, the dull of hearing whom it is the hardest to get to hear; but rather the man who is roaring out himself, and so cannot attend to anything else; and this is a mortifying indication of the little importance that