Page:Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Volume 1.djvu/15



Rh characters seems to have given him an intuitive power of finding out noticeable men. Wherever he was—in London, Germany, or Rome—a secret affinity was almost sure to bring him into contact with those who were most worth knowing, and to lead to a lasting acquaintance with them. When compelled, by Napoleon's soldiers, to fly from Hamburg, and to take refuge in Stockholm, he formed a friendship with the veteran Arndt, and there was no diminution in the warmth of their greeting after an interval of twenty-seven years.

Mr. Robinson's name is widely known as that of a capital talker. There is a saying that a man's strength is also his weakness, and in this case there are not wanting jokes about his taking all the conversation to himself. It is reported that one day at a breakfast party at Sam Rogers's, the host said to those assembled, "Oh, if there is any one here who wishes to say anything, he had better say it at once, for Crabb Robinson is coming." But there is no subject on which he more frequently reproaches himself, than with this habit of taking too large a share of the talk. When his strength was beginning to fail, his friend Edwin Field urged him in a letter to refrain from talking "more than two hours consecutively." He notes this in the Diary, and adds, "Is this satire? It does not offend me." Yet he was too candid not to acknowledge that conversation was the one thing in which, in his own estimation, he excelled. It was, he said, his power of expression which enabled him to make his way as a barrister, notwithstanding his