Of his style nothing need be said, for his readers have felt its charm. But it deserves to be remarked that this accomplished master of words had little verbal memory. He used to say that he could never recollect a phrase in its exact form, and in his books he often unconsciously varied, writing from memory, some expression whose precise form is on record. Nor had he any turn for languages. German he knew scarcely at all, a fact which makes the range of his historical knowledge appear more striking; and though he had spent several winters in Italy, he could not speak Italian except so far as he needed it for the inn or the railway. The want of mere verbal memory partly accounts for this deficiency, but it was not unconnected with the vehemence of his interest in the substance of things. He was so anxious to get at the kernel that he could not stop to examine the nut. In this absence of linguistic gifts, as well as in the keenness of his observation (and in his shortsightedness), he resembled Dean Stanley, who, though he had travelled in and brought back all that was best worth knowing from every country in Europe, had no facility in any language but his own.
Green was not one of those whose personality is unlike their books, for there was in both the same fertility, the same vivacity, the same quickness of sympathy. Nevertheless, his conversation seemed to give an even higher impression of intellectual power than did his writings, because it was so swift and so spontaneous. Such talk has rarely been heard in our time, so gay was it, so vivid, so various, so full of anecdote and illustration, so acute in criticism, so candid in consideration, so graphic in description, so abundant in sympathy, so flashing in insight, so full of colour and emotion as well as of knowledge and thought. One had to forbid one's self to visit him in the evening, because it was impossible to get away before two o'clock in the morning. And, unlike many famous talkers, he was just as willing to listen as to speak. One of the charms of his company was that it made a man feel better than his ordinary self. His appreciation of whatever had any worth in it, his comments and replies, so stimulated the interlocutor's mind that it moved faster and could hit upon apter expressions than at any other time. The same gifts which shone in his conversation, lucid arrangement of ideas, ready command of words, and a power in perceiving the tendencies of those whom he addressed, would have made him an admirable public speaker. I do not remember that he ever did speak, in his later years, to any audience larger than a committee of twenty. But he was an eloquent preacher. The first time I ever saw him was in St. Philip's Church at Stepney about 1866, and I shall never forget the impression made on me by the impassioned sentences that rang through the church from the fiery little figure in the pulpit with its thin face and bright black eyes.