One could take down a book from a shelf ten tines more wise and witty than almost any man's conversation. Bacon is wiser, Swift more humorous, than any person one is likely to meet with; but they cannot chime in with the exact frame of thought in which we happen to take them down from our shelves. Therein lies the luxury of conversation: and when a living speaker does not yield us that luxury, he becomes only a book on two legs.