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. Talk has none of the
freezing immunities of the pulpit. 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. And it is in
talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In
short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his
chief business in this world; and talk, which is the
harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most
accessible of pleasures.
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