rthy friend. You feel a pang of pleasure or pain? It is noted in your
memory, and some day or other makes its appearance in your manuscript.
Why, in your last Roundabout rubbish you mention reading your first
novel on the day when King George IV. was crowned. I remember him in his
cradle at St. James's, a lovely little babe; a gilt Chinese railing
was before him, and I dropped the tear of sensibility as I gazed on the
sleeping cherub."

"A tear--a fiddlestick, MR. STERNE," I growled out, for of course I
knew my friend in the wig and satin breeches to be no other than the
notorious, nay, celebrated Mr. Laurence Sterne.

"Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt you, mon ami?
If not, I pity you. Yes, he was beautiful. I was in London the year he
was born. I used to breakfast at the 'Mount Coffee-house.' I did not
become the fashion until two years later, when my 'Tristram' made his
appearance, who has held his own for a hundred years. By the way, mon
bon monsieur, how many authors of your present time will last till the
next century? Do you think Brown will?"

I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the ghost give a
ghastly snigger).

"Brown!" I roared. "One of the most over-rated men that ever put pen to
paper!"

"What do you think of Jones?"

I grew indignant with this old cynic. "As a reasonable ghost, come
out of the other world, you don't mean," I said, "to ask me a
serious opinion of Mr. Jones? His books may be very good reading for
maid-servants and school-boys, but you don't ask ME to read them? As a
scholar yourself you must know that--"

"Well, then, Robinson?"

"Robinson, I am told, has merit. I dare say; I never have been able
to read his books, and can't, therefore, form any opinion about Mr.
Robinson. At least you will allow that I am not speaking in a prejudiced
manner about HIM."

"Ah! I see you men of letters have your cabals and jealousies, as we
had in my time. There was an Irish fellow by the name of Gouldsmith,
who used to abuse me; but he went into no genteel company--and faith!
it mattered little, his praise or abuse. I never was more surprised
than when I heard that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and
elegance, had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that man, my
dear sir, 'twas ridiculous! You followed in the fashion, I hear, and
chose to lay a wreath before this queer little idol. Preposterous!
A pretty writer, who has turned some neat coup