such common-place remedials as a dear young
lover's courtesy or a deceased old miser's codicil, I should long ago
have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, my friend was never
known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in the
discovery; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was
naturally enough exhibiting itself in a "What on earth----?" he broke
out with the abruptness of an Abernethy, "Read my book."

Well, I did read it; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound,
can readily believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very
small portion of older material, it had been at chance intervals rapidly
thrown off in a couple of months, (the old current-quill style,) chiefly
with the view of relieving a too prolific brain: it appeared to me a
mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind; an honest, indeed, but often
useless exposure of multifarious fancies--some good, some bad, and not a
few indifferent; an incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand
thoughts, little worth the printing, if the very writing were not indeed
superfluous. Nevertheless, with all its faults, I thought the book a
novelty, and liked it not the less for its off-hand fashion; it had
something of the free, fresh, frank air of an old-school squire at
Christmas-tide, suggestive as his misletoe, cheerful as his face, and
careless as his hospitality. Knowing then that my friend had been more
than once an author--indeed, he tells us so himself--and perceiving,
from innumerable symptoms, that he meditated putting also this before
the world, I thought kindly to anticipate his wishes by proposing its
publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose
these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to
be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white
bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head,
the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of
immortality, printer's-ink? these----" I stopped him, for this other
mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite--"Yes, I did." An
involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause proceeded thus:
first, a promise not to burn the book; then a Bentley to the rescue,
with accessory considerations; and then, the due administration of a
little wholesome flattery: by this time we had obtained permission,
after modest reluctance pretty well enacted, to trans