Late in the evening of the same day this estimable lady, whose
inquiries into the properties of gastric juice, if not as scientific,
were to the full as enthusiastic as those of Bostock or Tiedeman
himself, was returning from an early tea, through an unfrequented
suburb of Manchester, when suddenly her eye fell upon Bernard
Cavanagh, seated in a little shop--a dish of sausages and a plate of
ham before him, while a frothing cup of porter ornamented his right
hand. It was true, he wore a patch above his eye, a large beard, and
various other disguises, but they served him not: she knew him at
once. The result is soon told: the police were informed; Mr. Cavanagh
was captured; the lady gave her testimony in a crowded court, and he
who lately was rolling on the wheel of fortune, was now condemned to
foot it on a very different wheel, and all for no other cause than
that he could not live without food.

The magistrate, who was eloquent on the occasion, called him an
impostor; designating by this odious epithet, a highly-wrought and
well-conceived work of imagination. Unhappy Defoe, your Robinson
Crusoe might have cost you a voyage across the seas; your man Friday
might have been a black Monday to you had you lived in our days. 964
is a severer critic than _The Quarterly_, and his judgment more
irrevocable.

[Illustration: The Man of Genius.]

We have never heard of any one who, discovering the fictitious
character of a novel he had believed as a fact, waited on the
publisher with a modest request that his money might be returned to
him, being obtained under false pretences; much less of his applying
to his worship for a warrant against G. P. R. James, Esq., or Harrison
Ainsworth, for certain imaginary woes and unreal sorrows depicted in
their writings: yet the conduct of the lady towards Mr. Cavanagh was
exactly of this nature. How did his appetite do her any possible
disservice? what sins against her soul were contained in his sausages?
and yet she must appeal to the justice as an injured woman: Cavanagh
had imposed upon her--she was wronged because he was hungry. All his
narrative, beautifully constructed and artfully put together, went for
nothing; his look, his manner, his entertaining anecdotes, his
fascinating conversation, his time--from ten in the morning till eight
in the evening--went all for nothing: this really is too bad. Do we
ask of every author to be the hero he describes? Is Bulwer, Pelham,
and Paul Cli