's
comic (as for your tradgady, it's mighty flatchulent), and a ready
plesnt pen. The man who says you are an As is an As himself. Don't
believe him, Barnet! not that I suppose you wil,--for, if I've formed
a correck apinion of you from your wucks, you think your small-beear as
good as most men's: every man does,--and why not? We brew, and we love
our own tap--amen; but the pint betwigst us, is this stewpid, absudd way
of crying out, because the public don't like it too. Why shood they,
my dear Barnet? You may vow that they are fools; or that the critix are
your enemies; or that the wuld should judge your poams by your critticle
rules, and not their own: you may beat your breast, and vow you are a
marter, and you won't mend the matter. Take heart, man! you're not so
misrabble after all: your spirits need not be so VERY cast down; you are
not so VERY badly paid. I'd lay a wager that you make, with one thing
or another--plays, novvles, pamphlicks, and little odd jobbs here and
there--your three thowsnd a year. There's many a man, dear Bullwig that
works for less, and lives content. Why shouldn't you? Three thowsnd a
year is no such bad thing,--let alone the barnetcy: it must be a great
comfort to have that bloody hand in your skitching.

But don't you sea, that in a wuld naturally envius, wickid, and fond
of a joak, this very barnetcy, these very cumplaints,--this ceaseless
groning, and moning, and wining of yours, is igsackly the thing which
makes people laff and snear more? If you were ever at a great school,
you must recklect who was the boy most bullid, and buffited, and
purshewd--he who minded it most. He who could take a basting got but
few; he who rord and wep because the knotty boys called him nicknames,
was nicknamed wuss and wuss. I recklect there was at our school, in
Smithfield, a chap of this milksop, spoony sort, who appeared among the
romping, ragged fellers in a fine flanning dressing-gownd, that his mama
had given him. That pore boy was beaten in a way that his dear ma and
aunts didn't know him; his fine flanning dressing-gownd was torn all to
ribbings, and he got no pease in the school ever after, but was abliged
to be taken to some other saminary, where, I make no doubt, he was paid
off igsactly in the same way.

Do you take the halligory, my dear Barnet? Mutayto nominy--you know what
I mean. You are the boy, and your barnetcy is the dressing-gownd. You
dress yourself out finer than other chaps and the