If you had told him this, and he had, as he
thought, perceived the truth of it, he would immediately have desired
some fine thing to say, in order that he might say it well! He could not
have been persuaded that, if one has nothing worth saying, the best
possible style for him is just the most halting utterance that ever
issued from empty skull. To make a good speech was the grand thing! what
side it was on, the right or the wrong, was a point unthinkable with
him. Even whether the speaker believed what he said was of no
consequence--except that, if he did not, his speech would be the more
admirable, as the greater _tour de force_, and himself the more
admirable as the cleverer fellow.
Knowing that Hester was fond of a good ballad, he thought at first to
try his hand on one: it could not be difficult, he thought! But he found
that, like everything else, a ballad was easy enough if you could do it,
and more than difficult enough if you could not: after several attempts
he wisely yielded the ambition; his gift did not lie in that direction!
He had, however, been so long in the habit of writing drawing-room
verses that he had better ground for hoping he might produce something
in that kind which the too severe taste of Hester could yet admire! It
would be a great stroke towards placing him in a right position towards
her--one, namely, in which his intellectual faculty would be more
manifest! It should be a love song, and he would present it as one he
had written long ago: as such it would say the more for him while it
would not commit him.
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