rance in a few days."

"For France?--gracious! how do you know?"

"I hear'd Mr Bristles, which is their confidant, say something about a
chay and Dover. In cooss they will go that way to Boulogne."

Oh, Maecenas! is there no difference between the chef-d'oeuvre of the
great Stickleback, and the town of Dover and a post-chaise.

CHAPTER V.

In a week after these events, six or seven gentlemen were gathered
round a table in a room very near the skylight in the Minerva
chambers. Our former acquaintance, Mr Bristles, whose name shone in
white paint above the entrance door, was evidently strongly impressed
with the dignity of his position; and as in the pauses of conversation
he placed the pen he was using transversely in his mouth, and turned
over the pages of various books on the table before him, it will be
seen that he presided not at a feast of substantial meat and drink,
but at one of those regular "feasts and flows" which the great Mr
Pitskiver was in the habit of alluding to, in describing the
intellectual treats of which he was so prodigious a glutton.

"What success, Sidsby?" enquired Bristles with a vast appearance of
interest.

"None at all," replied the successful dramatist, or, in other words,
the long-backed Ticket to whom we were introduced at the commencement
of the story. "I have no invitation to dinner yet, and Sophy thinks he
has forgotten me."

"That's odd--very odd," mused Mr Bristles, "for I don't know that I
ever praised any one half so highly before, not even Stickleback; and
the first act was really superb. It took me a whole week to write it."

"But I did not understand some parts of it, and I am afraid I spoiled
it in the reading. But Sophy was enchanted with the poem you made me
copy."

"A sensible girl; but how to get at the father is the thing. I have
mentioned a few of the perfections of our friend Miss Hendy to him in
a way that I think will stick. If we could get _her_ good word."

"Oh, she's very good!" replied Sidsby, "she says I'm far above Lord
Byron and Thomas Moore."

"Why not? haven't I told you to say, wherever you go, that she is
above Corinne?"

"Ah," said Sidsby, "but what's the use of all this to me? I am a
wine-merchant, not a poet; my uncle will soon take me into
partnership, and when they find out that I know no more about
literature than a pig, what an impostor they'll think me!"

"Not more of an impostor than half the other literary men of the day,
w