l at seventeen, after having
been plucked for a cheap French degree, and goes straightway into
her Majesty's Household Brigade.

At the beginning of his literary career it would cut him to the
quick to find himself alluded to as that inspired Anglo-Gallic
buffoon, the ex-Guardsman, whose real vocation, when he wasn't
twaddling about the music of the spheres, or writing moral French
books, was to be Mr. Toole's understudy.

He was even impressed by the smartness of those second-rate
decadents, French and English, who so gloried in their own
degeneracy--as though one were to glory in scrofula or rickets;
those unpleasant little anthropoids with the sexless little muse and
the dirty little Eros, who would ride their angry, jealous little
tilt at him in the vain hope of provoking some retort which would
have lifted them up to glory! Where are they now? He has improved
them all away! Who ever hears of decadents nowadays?

Then there were the grubs of Grub Street, who sometimes manage to
squirt a drop from their slime-bags on to the swiftly passing boot
that scorns to squash them. He had no notion of what manner of
creatures they really were, these gentles! He did not meet them at
any club he belonged to--it was not likely. Clubs have a way of
blackballing grubs--especially grubs that are out of the common
grubby; nor did he sit down to dinner with them at any dinner-table,
or come across them at any house he was by way of frequenting; but
he imagined they were quite important persons because they did not
sign their articles! and he quite mistook their place in the economy
of creation. C'etait un naif, le beau Josselin!

Big fleas have little fleas, and they've got to put up with them!
There is no "poudre insecticide" for literary vermin--and more's the
pity! (Good heavens! what would the generous and delicate-minded
Barty say, if he were alive, at my delivering myself in this
unworthy fashion about these long-forgotten assailants of his, and
at my age too--he who never penned a line in retaliation! He would
say I was the most unseemly grub of them all, and he would be quite
right; so I am just now, and ought to know better--but it amuses
me.)

Then there were the melodious bardlets who imitate those who imitate
those who imitate the forgotten minor poets of the olden time and
log-roll each other in quaint old English. They did not log-roll
Barty, whom they thought coarse and vulgar, and wrote to that effect
in very p