which I had read, and displayed an extent of reading, which, but for the simplicity and openness of his character, I should have been induced to suspect.
Yet with this variety of reading, and most singular powers of memory, his conversation is dull, I had almost said unprofitable. He has retained every thing which he has read, but digested not one particle: he has collected most amply, but made no arrangement of his stores. His mind seems like a vast repository of furniture, where the elegancies of the drawing-room and the necessaries of the kitchen are promiscuously crowded together; every thing is there which can minister to your wants, or contribute to your pleasures, but all is in disorder and confusion. The principal fault of this person is, that he is utterly unacquainted with his own powers; and to this I attribute his almost total want of imagination and arrangement. I, as it were, obliged him to converse with me, and he is fond of speaking English, or the laudable pride of superior attainments would not lead him to display his acquisitions.
