(Indeed an American hostess has put it on record that an English guest commented to her the other day, "But, we don't want to be entertained.") But, undoubtedly, conversation began to go out of fashion when the phrase: "He speaks like a book" was first used invidiously. It marked the bifurcation of the English language: the distinction between our spoken and our written tongue. For this the periodical press must be held responsible.
London was always press-ridden. In the days of Johnson—who invented the Magazine—the Newspapers would make a prodigious fuss; they could drive a lady so sensible as Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi almost to distraction, with comments upon her debated marriage, and supply the Town with Talk—as opposed to Conversation—about such a matter as that Piozzi marriage, for days, months and years on end. And earlier, even, Defoe, who was the first of the Journalists, made Town Talk out of solid facts, unsolid fiction, or practical projects. But books still monopolised the airy realms of philosophical speculations; preachers still retained the sole right to lecture upon divinity—and books and preachers entered intimately into the lives of men and women. People read "Clarissa" by the year, and debated, at dinner tables, as to the abstract proprieties of the case of Pamela. The Generalisation flourished; Conversation in consequence was possible.
But, with the coming of the Modern Newspaper, the Book has been deposed from its intimate position in the hearts of men. You cannot in London read a book
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