iction of a
fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is--flippancy; the
second, flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it
will pass for wit, with some it will pass for scorn,--and even the witty
will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the
risk of being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a
defect still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is
sour, or dull when it is bottled and has a froth upon it?

_A_. The advice is excellent; but I fear that this flippancy is as
difficult to acquire an the tone of true eloquence.

_B_. Difficult! I defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write
out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of --, and you will be
saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as
have done most of the late fashionable novel-writers, repair to their
instructors--the lady's-maid, for flippancy in the vein _spirituelle_!
to a London footman for the vein critical; but, if you wish a flippancy
of a still higher order, at once more solemn and more empty, which I
would call the vein political, read the speeches of some of our members
of Parliament. Only read them, I wish no man so ill an to inflict upon
him the torture of hearing them--read them, I say, and you will have
taken the very highest degree in the order of inane flippancy.

_A_. I see it at once. Your observations are as true as they are
severe. When we would harangue geese, we must condescend to hiss; but
still, my dear Barnstaple, though you have fully proved to me that in a
fashionable novel all plot is unnecessary, don't you think there ought
to be a catastrophe, or sort of a kind of an end to the work, or the
reader may be brought up short, or as the sailors say, "all standing,"
when he comes to the word "Finis," and exclaim with an air of
stupefaction--"And then--"

_B_. And then, if he did, it would be no more than the fool deserved.
I don't know whether it would not be advisable to leave off in the
middle of a sentence, of a word, nay of a syllable, if it be possible: I
am sure the winding-up would be better than the lackadaisical
running-down of most of the fashionable novels. Snap the mainspring of
your watch, and none but an ass can expect you to tell by it what it is
o'clock; snap the thread of your narrative in the same way, and he must
be an unreasonable being who would expect a reasonable conclusion.
Finish th