remarks. He was
very good-natured--it was impossible to offend him--and wrote touching
poems in cheap journals about this "fog-dotted earth," which never did
anybody any harm so far as I was aware of. He was one of the numerous
tribe who impose on publishers by their swagger till they are found out.
Another of the same class was a gentleman of a higher station and with
scholarly pretensions. On one occasion he served me rather a scurvy
trick. I had published a volume of sketches of British statesmen. One
of the characters, a very distinguished politician, died soon after. My
gentleman at that time was engaged to write biographical sketches of such
exalted personages when they died, and accordingly he wrote an article
which appeared the next day in one of the morning papers. On reading it,
I found it was almost word for word the sketch which I had written in my
own book, without the slightest acknowledgment. On my remonstrating, he
complained that the absence of acknowledgment was quite accidental.
Owing to the hurry in which he wrote, he had quite forgotten to mention
my name, and if I would say nothing about it, he would do me a good
service at the first opportunity. My friend failed to do so. Indeed, I
may say that as a literary man his career was somewhat of a failure,
though he managed for a time to secure appointments on good newspapers,
and became connected with more than one or two distinguished firms of
publishers. He was known to many, yet I never heard any one say a good
word on his behalf.

I always avoided literary society. Perhaps in that respect I did wrong
as regards my own interest, for I find the pressmen who belong to clubs
are always ready to give each other a helping hand in the way of
good-natured reference, and hence so much of that mutual admiration which
forms so marked a feature in the literary gossip of our day, and which is
of such little interest to the general reader. When I read such stuff I
am reminded of the chambermaid who said to a lady acquaintance, "I hear
it is all over London already that I am going to leave my lady," and of
the footman who, being newly married, desired his comrade to tell him
freely what the town thought of it. It is seldom that literary men shine
in conversation, and that was one reason I cared little to belong to any
of the literary clubs which existed, and I dare say exist now. Dean
Swift seems to have been of a similar opinion. He tells us the w