Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing but his character.  AKENSIDE, in conversation with select friends, often touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review those eminent ancients whom he loved; he imbued with his poetic faculty even the details of their lives; and seemed another Plato while he poured libations to their memory in the language of Plato, among those whose studies and feelings were congenial with his own.  ROMNEY, with a fancy entirely his own, would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by constitution he was prone; thus Cumberland, from personal intimacy, describes the conversation of this man of genius.  Even the temperate sensibility of HUME was touched by the bursts of feeling of ROUSSEAU; who, he says, “in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like inspiration.”  BARRY, that unhappy genius! was the most repulsive of men in his exterior.  The vehemence of his language, the wildness of his glance, his habit of introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a horror to some.  A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine a man in her life.  The conversation happening to turn on that principle of benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be forgotten.  That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of Christ, which he was always talking of executing:  “It is here!” he would cry, striking his head.  That which baffled the invention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.

There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the mastery of their life.  Their conversations of this nature affect the mind to a distant period of life.  Who, having listened to such, has forgotten what a man of genius has said at such moments?  Who dwells not on the single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the moment, which came from its source?  Then the mind of genius rises as the melody of the AEolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings —­it comes and goes—­and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.