Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 1, 1894 - Miscellanies, Volume I

TALK AND TALKERS
jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading
manner, as to the light guitar ; even wisdom comes
from his tongue like singing ; no one is, indeed, more
tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings
the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the bark-
ing of the Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt
the flow of his Horatian humours. His mirth has
something of the tragedy of the world for its perpetual
background ; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a
double orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance,
one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is not
truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and
this instant war in his members sometimes divides
the man's attention. He does not always, perhaps
not often, frankly surrender himself in conversation.
He brings into the talk other thoughts than those
which he expresses ; you are conscious that he keeps
an eye on something else, that he does not shake off
the world, nor quite forget himself Hence arise
occasional disappointments ; even an occasional un-
fairness for his companions, who find themselves one
day giving too much, and the next, when they are
wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel
is in another class from any I have mentioned. He
is no debater, but appears in conversation, as occa-
sion rises, in two distinct characters, one of which
I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first,
he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high,
courtly hill-top, and from that vantage-ground drops
you his remarks like favours. He seems not to share
in our sublunary contentions ; he wears no sign of
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