in causing me misery and mortification; if, on former occasions,
he was continually sending me in quest of lives and trials difficult to
find, he now was continually demanding lives and trials which it was
impossible to find, the personages whom he mentioned never having lived,
nor consequently been tried. Moreover, some of my best lives and trials
which I had corrected and edited with particular care, and on which I
prided myself no little, he caused to be cancelled after they had passed
through the press. Amongst these was the life of "Gentleman Harry".
"They are drugs, sir," said the publisher, "drugs; that life of Harry
Simms has long been the greatest drug in the calendar--has it not,
Taggart?"

Taggart made no answer save by taking a pinch of snuff. The reader has,
I hope, not forgotten Taggart, whom I mentioned whilst giving an account
of my first morning's visit to the publisher. I beg Taggart's pardon for
having been so long silent about him; but he was a very silent man--yet
there was much in Taggart--and Taggart had always been civil and kind to
me in his peculiar way.

"Well, young gentleman," said Taggart to me one morning, when we chanced
to be alone a few days after the affair of the cancelling, "how do you
like authorship?"

"I scarcely call authorship the drudgery I am engaged in," said I.

"What do you call authorship?" said Taggart.

"I scarcely know," said I; "that is, I can scarcely express what I think
it."

"Shall I help you out?" said Taggart, turning round his chair, and
looking at me.

"If you like," said I.

"To write something grand," said Taggart, taking snuff; "to be stared
at--lifted on people's shoulders--"

"Well," said I, "that is something like it."

Taggart took snuff. "Well," said he, "why don't you write something
grand?"

"I have," said I.

"What?" said Taggart.

"Why," said I, "there are those ballads."

Taggart took snuff.

"And those wonderful versions from Ab Gwilym."

Taggart took snuff again.

"You seem to be very fond of snuff," said I, looking at him angrily.

Taggart tapped his box.

"Have you taken it long?"

"Three-and-twenty years."

"What snuff do you take?"

"Universal mixture."

"And you find it of use?"

Taggart tapped his box.

"In what respect?" said I.

"In many--there is nothing like it to get a man through; but for snuff I
should scarcely be where I am now."

"Have you been long here?"

"Three-and-twenty years."