self in this big town,
when, for the life of me, I don't think I could write anything half so
clever as what I have been reading. And then I laid down the paper, and
fell into deep musing; rousing myself from which, I took a glass of wine,
and pouring out another, began musing again. What I have been reading,
thought I, is certainly very clever and very talented; but talent and
cleverness I think I have heard some one say are very common-place
things, only fitted for everyday occasions. I question whether the man
who wrote the book I saw this day on the bridge was a clever man; but,
after all, was he not something much better? I don't think he could have
written this article, but then he wrote the book which I saw on the
bridge. Then, if he could not have written the article on which I now
hold my forefinger--and I do not believe he could--why should I feel
discouraged at the consciousness that I, too, could not write it? I
certainly could no more have written the article than he could; but then,
like him, though I would not compare myself to the man who wrote the book
I saw upon the bridge, I think I could--and here I emptied the glass of
claret--write something better.

Thereupon I resumed the newspaper; and, as I was before struck with the
fluency of style and the general talent which it displayed, I was now
equally so with its common-placeness and want of originality on every
subject; and it was evident to me that, whatever advantage these
newspaper-writers might have over me in some points, they had never
studied the Welsh bards, translated Kaempe Viser, or been under the
pupilage of Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno.

And as I sat conning the newspaper three individuals entered the room,
and seated themselves in the box at the farther end of which I was. They
were all three very well dressed; two of them elderly gentlemen, the
third a young man about my own age, or perhaps a year or two older. They
called for coffee; and, after two or three observations, the two eldest
commenced a conversation in French, which, however, though they spoke it
fluently enough, I perceived at once was not their native language; the
young man, however, took no part in their conversation, and when they
addressed a portion to him, which indeed was but rarely, merely replied
by a monosyllable. I have never been a listener, and I paid but little
heed to their discourse, nor indeed to themselves; as I occasionally
looked up, however