a sincere desire to do good, and promote nollitch: and
I appeal to your honor,--I lay my hand on my busm, and in the fase of
this noble company beg you to say, When you rung your bell, who came to
you fust? When you stopt out at Brooke's till morning, who sat up for
you? When you was ill, who forgot the natral dignities of his station,
and answered the two-pair bell? Oh, sir," says I, "I know what's what;
don't send me away. I know them littery chaps, and, beleave me, I'd
rather be a footman. The work's not so hard--the pay is better: the
vittels incompyrably supearor. I have but to clean my things, and run my
errints, and you put clothes on my back, and meat in my mouth. Sir! Mr.
Bullwig! an't I right? shall I quit MY station and sink--that is to say,
rise--to YOURS?"

Bullwig was violently affected; a tear stood in his glistening i.
"Yellowplush," says he, seizing my hand, "you ARE right. Quit not your
present occupation; black boots, clean knives, wear plush, all your
life, but don't turn literary man. Look at me. I am the first novelist
in Europe. I have ranged with eagle wing over the wide regions of
literature, and perched on every eminence in its turn. I have gazed with
eagle eyes on the sun of philosophy, and fathomed the mysterious depths
of the human mind. All languages are familiar to me, all thoughts are
known to me, all men understood by me. I have gathered wisdom from
the honeyed lips of Plato, as we wandered in the gardens of
Acadames--wisdom, too, from the mouth of Job Johnson, as we smoked
our 'backy in Seven Dials. Such must be the studies, and such is the
mission, in this world, of the Poet-Philosopher. But the knowledge
is only emptiness; the initiation is but misery; the initiated, a man
shunned and bann'd by his fellows. Oh," said Bullwig, clasping his
hands, and throwing his fine i's up to the chandelier, "the curse of
Pwometheus descends upon his wace. Wath and punishment pursue them
from genewation to genewation! Wo to genius, the heaven-scaler, the
fire-stealer! Wo and thrice bitter desolation! Earth is the wock on
which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his withing victim--men, the vultures
that feed and fatten on him. Ai, ai! it is agony eternal--gwoaning and
solitawy despair! And you, Yellowplush, would penetwate these mystewies:
you would waise the awful veil, and stand in the twemendous Pwesence.
Beware; as you value your peace, beware! Withdwaw, wash Neophyte!
For heaven's sake--O for heaven's