d there's your misfortune. He's not half a
bad fellow, you find when you haven't got to serve him.'

'Superior to his official parasites, one supposes!' Colney murmured.

The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary failure
having certain merits; they discussed it, to compliment the crownless
author; and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the
meanness prompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the
philosopher's lantern upon one's fellows.

Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearing
Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor some of the recent occurrences at
Brighton. Simeon's tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word;
he was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national
grotesque-sublime.

'That Demerara Supple-jack, Victor! Don't listen to Simeon; he's a man
of lean narrative, fit to chronicle political party wrangles and
such like crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have Old
England's organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus,
ennobled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the machinery to hand. Keep a
straight eye on the primary motives of man, you'll own the English
produce the material for proud verse; they're alive there! Dartrey's
Demerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I haven't seen it--if
it's possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar
appearance in repose, Jove's lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus
at another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purpose
of laying his miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars,
who had offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! His name,
Simeon?--Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably, that
he obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his
convenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in
his place another young student, who'll grow up to do similarly. And
Dartrey, we assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey
twirling the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined
we shall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs
heading heroic louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always
unpatriotic, you 'll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes
on a star: eyes on Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no
poetic fiction. Seeing him on his way, thus terribly armed, and knowing
his intent, Venus, to