left now;
except in a fashionable novel. But you comprehend the value of this new
auxiliary.

_A._ Nothing can be better. Barnstaple, you are really----, but I say no
more. If a truly great man cannot be flattered with delicacy, it must
not be attempted at all; silence then becomes the best tribute. Your
advice proves you to be truly great. I am _silent_, therefore you
understand the full force of the oratory of my thanks.

_B._ (_bowing._) Well, Ansard, you have found out the cheapest way of
paying off your bills of gratitude I ever heard of. "Poor, even in
thanks," was well said by Shakespeare; but you, it appears, are rich, in
having nothing at all wherewith to pay. If you could transfer the same
doctrine to your tradesmen, you need not write novels.

_A._ Alas! my dear fellow, mine is not yet written. There is one
important feature, nay, the most important feature of all--the style of
language, the diction--on that, Barnstaple, you have not yet
doctrinated.

_B._ (_pompously._) When Demosthenes was asked what were the three
principal attributes of eloquence, he answered, that the first was
action; on being asked which was the second, he replied, action; and the
third, action; and such is the idea of the Irish _mimbers_ in the House
of Commons. Now there are three important requisites in the diction of a
fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is--flippancy; the second,
flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it will pass
for wit, with some it will pass for scorn, and even the witty will not
be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of
being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a defect
still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is sour, or
dull when it is bottled and has a froth upon it?

_A._ The advice is excellent; but I fear that this flippancy is as
difficult to acquire as the tone of true eloquence.

_B._ Difficult! I defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write
out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of ----, and you will be
saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as
have done most of the late fashionable novel writers, repair to their
instructors--the lady's-maid, for flippancy in the vein _spirituelle_;
to a London footman for the vein critical; but, if you wish a flippancy
of a still higher order, at once more solemn and more empty, which I
would call the vein political, read the