With both you can pass
days in an enchanted country of the mind, with people, scenery and
manners of its own; live a life apart, more arduous, active and
glowing than any real existence; and come forth again when the talk
is over, as out of a theatre or a dream, to find the east wind
still blowing and the chimney-pots of the old battered city still
around you. Jack has the far finer mind, Burly the far more
honest; Jack gives us the animated poetry, Burly the romantic
prose, of similar themes; the one glances high like a meteor and
makes a light in darkness; the other, with many changing hues of
fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; but both have
the same humour and artistic interests, the same unquenched ardour
in pursuit, the same gusts of talk and thunderclaps of
contradiction.
Cockshot (5) is a different article, but vastly entertaining, and
has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner
is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much.
The point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You
can propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-
made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay
its timbers and launch it in your presence. "Let me see," he will
say. "Give me a moment. I SHOULD have some theory for that.
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