_B._ There is some truth in these remarks. Every milliner's girl, who devours your pages in bed by the half-hour's light of tallow stolen for the purpose, imagines a strong similarity between herself and your Angelicanarinella, and every shop-boy measuring tape or weighing yellow soap will find out attributes common to himself and to your hero.
_A._ Exactly. As long as you draw perfection in both sexes, you are certain to be read, because by so doing you flatter human nature and self-love, and transfer it to the individual who reads. Now a picture of real life----
_B._ Is like some of Wouvermans' best pictures, which will not be purchased by many, because his dogs in the fore-ground are doing exactly what all dogs will naturally do when they first are let out of their kennels.
_A._ Wouvermans should have known better, and made his dogs better mannered if he expected his pictures to be hung up in the parlour of refinement.
_A._ Perhaps you would like to have another passage or two.
_B._ Excuse me: I will imagine it all. I only hope, Ansard, this employment will not interfere with your legal practice.
_A._ My dear Barnstaple, it certainly will not, because my legal practice cannot be interfered with. I have been called to the bar, but find no employment in my calling. I have been sitting in my gown and wig for one year, and may probably sit a dozen more, before I have to rise to address their lordships. I have not yet had a guinea brief. My only chance is, to be sent out as judge to Sierra Leone, or perhaps to be made a commissioner of the Court of Requests.
_B._ You are indeed humble in your aspirations. I recollect the time, Ansard, when you dreamt of golden fame, and aspired to the wool-sack--when your ambition prompted you to midnight labour, and you showed an energy----
_A._ (_putting his hands up to his forehead, with his elbows on the table._) What can I do, Barnstaple? If I trust to briefs, my existence will be but brief--we all must live.
_B._ I will not reply as Richelieu did to a brother author, "Je ne vois pas la nécessité," but this I do say, that if you are in future to live by supplying the public with such nonsense, the shorter your existence the better.