Matter enough, and
even more than enough, will be found in them for illustrating whatever
we may find to say respecting the author's powers and attainments.
The _Friends in Council_ purports to be edited by a clergyman named
Dunsford, who was so obliging and laborious as to set down the
conversations in which he, Ellesmere (the great lawyer), and Milverton
(the author), had engaged on various occasions, when the last read to
his companions a number of short essays which he was writing. We have
a page or two of introduction, informing us of this circumstance, and
of a few other particulars needful to be mentioned; and then, after a
little talk among the friends, an essay is read, followed by the
interlocutors' comments, and a discussion of its merits. These
conversations form a very agreeable portion of the work, and exhibit a
fine mastery of dialogue. They are exactly like the discourse of
intelligent and accomplished men, and therefore very much unlike the
ordinary run of book-reported talk. A few sentences may be not unfitly
quoted, by way of exhibiting their quality.
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