winds, though he never loved with more
outrageous intensity than at the moment he discards his mistress; so he
fights three duels with the two brothers and father. He wounds one of
the young men dangerously, the other slightly; fires his pistol in the
air when he meets her father--for how could he take the life of him who
gave life to his adored one? Your hero can always hit a man just where
he pleases--_vide_ every novel in Mr C.'s collection. The hero becomes
misanthropical, the heroine maniacal. The former marries an antiquated
and toothless dowager, as an escape from the imaginary disgust he took
at a sight of a matchless woman; and the latter marries an old brute,
who threatens her life every night, and puts her in bodily fear every
morning, as an indemnity in full for the loss of the man of her
affections. They are both romantically miserable; and then come on your
tantalising scenes of delicate distress, and so the end of your third
volume, and then finish without any end at all. _Verb. sap. sat._ Or, if
you like it better, kill the old dowager of a surfeit, and make the old
brute who marries the heroine commit suicide; and, after all these
unheard-of trials, marry them as fresh and beautiful as ever.

_A._ A thousand thanks. Your _verba_ are not thrown to a _sap._ Can I
possibly do you any favour for all this kindness?

_B._ Oh, my dear fellow! the very greatest. As I see yours will be, at
all points, a most fashionable novel, do me the inestimable favour _not_
to ask me _to read it_.

How to write a Book of Travels

_Mr Ansard's Chambers._

_A._ (_alone._) Well, I thought it hard enough to write a novel at the
dictate of the bibliopolist; but to be condemned to sit down and write
my travels--travels that have never extended farther than the Lincoln's
Inn Coffee House for my daily food, and a walk to Hampstead on a Sunday.
These travels to be swelled into Travels up the Rhine in the year 18--.
Why, it's impossible. O that Barnstaple were here, for he has proved my
guardian angel! Lazy, clever dog!

_Enter Barnstaple._

_B._ Pray, my dear Ansard, to whom did you apply that last epithet?

_A._ My dear Barnstaple, I never was more happy to see you. Sit down, I
have much to tell you, all about myself and my difficulties.

_B._ The conversation promises to be interesting to me, at all events.

_A._ Everything is interesting to true friendship.

_B._ Now I perceive that you do want something. Well,