in all the above propensities which we have said Mr. Pen
possessed, it will be seen that a young fellow, with such liberal tastes
and amusements, must needs in the course of two or three years spend or
owe a very handsome sum of money. We have said our friend Pen had not a
calculating turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously extravagant;
and it is certain that Paddington's tailor's account; Guttlebury's
cook's bill for dinners; Dillon Tandy's bill with Finn, the print
seller, for Raphael-Morgheus and Landseer proofs, and Wormall's dealings
with Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine editions, black-letter
folios, and richly illuminated Missals of the XVI. Century; and
Snaffle's or Foker's score with Nile the horsedealer, were, each and all
of them, incomparably greater than any little bills which Mr. Pen might
run up with the above-mentioned tradesmen. But Pendennis of Boniface
had the advantage over all these young gentlemen, his friends and
associates, of a universality of taste: and whereas young Lord
Paddington did not care twopence for the most beautiful print, or to
look into any gilt frame that had not a mirror within it; and Guttlebury
did not mind in the least how he was dressed, and had an aversion for
horse exercise, nay a terror of it; and Snaffle never read any printed
works but the 'Racing Calendar' or 'Bell's Life,' or cared for any
manuscript except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book:--our
Catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in every one of the
branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and distinguished
himself tolerably in each.

Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the university, and was
hailed as a sort of Crichton; and as for the English verse prize, in
competition for which we have seen him busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones
of Jesus carried it that year certainly, but the undergraduates thought
Pen's a much finer poem, and he had his verses printed at his
own expense, and distributed in gilt morocco covers amongst his
acquaintance. I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen's
bookcases, and have it before me this minute, bound up in a collection
of old Oxbridge tracts, university statutes, prize-poems by successful
and unsuccessful candidates, declamations recited in the college chapel,
speeches delivered at the Union Debating Society, and inscribed by
Arthur with his name and college, Pendennis--Boniface; or presented
to him by his affecti