nd all the littleness of inferior fry:
that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or
that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should
live for and with such men alone.

But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of
_pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt,
miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou
father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast
thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the
schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and
contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged
cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and
the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of
managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and _claqueurs_,
and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence
bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of
contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute
necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a
pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the
coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O
Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:--Time misspent, industry
misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently
applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions,
solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!

True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives
to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no _social_ pre-eminence,
nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we
may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all
other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of
themselves: they are _individually_ admired, not worshipped as a
congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their
public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his
closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar,
the man of rank, the politician, the _millionaire_, must merge in the
gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own
person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or
submitted to any where else.

The rewards of