n the Duke, his Grandmother, and the Jesuit
Butler, is one of the most harrowing and exciting I ever read)--and, of
course, you must turn your real genius to some other channel; and we may
expect that your pen shall not be idle.

"The original plan I have to propose to you, then, is taken from the
French, just like the original dramas above mentioned; and, indeed,
I found it in the law report of the National newspaper, and a French
literary gentleman, M. Emanuel Gonzales, has the credit of the
invention. He and an advertisement agent fell out about a question of
money, the affair was brought before the courts, and the little plot so
got wind. But there is no reason why you should not take the plot and
act on it yourself. You are a known man; the public relishes your works;
anything bearing the name of Snooks is eagerly read by the masses; and
though Messrs. Hookey, of Holywell Street, pay you handsomely, I make no
doubt you would like to be rewarded at a still higher figure.

"Unless he writes with a purpose, you know, a novelist in our days is
good for nothing. This one writes with a socialist purpose; that with
a conservative purpose: this author or authoress with the most delicate
skill insinuates Catholicism into you, and you find yourself all but a
Papist in the third volume: another doctors you with Low Church remedies
to work inwardly upon you, and which you swallow down unsuspiciously, as
children do calomel in jelly. Fiction advocates all sorts of truth
and causes--doesn't the delightful bard of the Minories find Moses in
everything? M. Gonzales's plan, and the one which I recommend to my dear
Snooks, simply was to write an advertisement novel. Look over The Times
or the 'Directory,' walk down Regent Street or Fleet Street any day--see
what houses advertise most, and put yourself into communication with
their proprietors. With your rings, your chains, your studs, and the tip
on your chin, I don't know any greater swell than Bob Snooks. Walk into
the shops, I say, ask for the principal, and introduce yourself, saying,
'I am the great Snooks; I am the author of the "Mysteries of May Fair;"
my weekly sale is 281,000; I am about to produce a new work called "The
Palaces of Pimlico, or the Curse of the Court," describing and lashing
fearlessly the vices of the aristocracy; this book will have a sale
of at least 530,000; it will be on every table--in the boudoir of the
pampered duke, as in the chamber of the honest a