going of his admirers—would claim for him that he was a great editor. But no one who heard him would deny his charm as a lecturer. Charles Kingsley, who had little love for Nonconformists, and even less knowledge of them, described Dawson as "the greatest talker in England" Mr. Johnson, whom I have already quoted, said that " talking came to him as easily as breathing." He was a talker, not an orator. He attempted no sustained intensity or elaboration of utterance —not even the elaboration that achieves simplicity. In speaking, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, he spoke as he might have spoken to half a dozen friends gathered round the fireside. The style was easy, natural, intimate, unstudied, and direct. The tone varied, and so did the mood. He might slip from indignation to pathos, or from humour to disdain, in swift succession; but he never shouted and he never stormed. It was talk—talk at its best; it was not declamation. And the talk was never hazy, but always clear. Some men think in a fog and speak in a fog, and the fog soon spreads from the man who speaks to the men who listen. For if you are to have any chance of making yourself understood by others, the first condition of success is that you should understand yourself. Now Dawson always understood what he wished to say at the time when he said it; and those who heard him —if they were persons of ordinary intelligence understood it too. What he thought, what he said, this week might be different from what he would think and from what he would say next week; for his estimates and judgments varied with his moods, and though his
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU1Nzc=