Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/340

Rh say a thing of feeling to one who could not feel it, or ex- press a noble thought to those who could not understand it. Her conversation was neither above nor below those to whom she spoke. She seemed to have the secret of all natures, the measure and the shades of all minds.

Eliza was not learned ; she was weU-informed and made no pretension in being so. Her knowledge was based so securely in her mind, and her mind so ruled her, that it was always she, and not her knowledge, that we felt the most. She knew English and Italian and read the literatures of several other languages in our best translations. But, above all, she knew her own language perfectly. She made sev- eral definitions of synonyms which the Abbd Girard and the best minds of the Academy would not have disowned. I never knew any one to have as she had the precious gift of the right word, — that gift without which we cannot have either accuracy or gradation of expression ; a gift which presupposes equally a trained mind, a profound knowledge of grammar, and — independently of natural good taste — that perfected and conventional taste which can be acquired only by intercourse with men of letters and men of the world both.

The best-written books have their moments of tedium and their lacunae of interest. Eliza's conversation, whenever she would or could give herself up to it wholly, had none. She said simple things, but she never said them in a common way, and that art — which seemed no art at all in her — never made itself felt, and never let her drop into mannerism or affectation. She used no novel terms and employed no antitheses or double-meanings. She sometimes applauded a play on words by others, but it had to be appropriate, in good taste, or else said naturally, on the spur of the moment and with ease, which to her eyes was always a chief