es, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous
circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was
his heir,--a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks.
He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you
saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his
character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a
dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition
to my own--bought an estate, and an immense number of books--and
cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted
trees--I drained meadows--and wrote books. The trees grew--the meadows
flourished--but the books never came to an end. Something always
interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When
they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they
were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a
scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In
history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each
other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick
Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the
exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few
letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a
Great Unpublished--in the same way as I understand there are a number of
extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves
the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will
bring better days to us both--types for me--actors for them.

At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years
of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a
house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to
the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly--not
exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one--the
drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet
came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a
drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy
life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the
beginnings of books continually.

One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I
heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from