t that I ever heard of was Sir Godfrey Kneller, who said to
Pope, when he was painting his picture, "I can't do so well as I should
do, unless you flatter me a little; pray, flatter me, Mr. Pope! You know
I love to be flattered."

You see, my excellent Robert, that, by some hocus-pocus which I do not
exactly comprehend, myself, I have introduced a wheel within a wheel, a
letter within a letter, a play within a play, after the manner of
the old dramatists; and I beg you to make a note that the foregoing
admonitions and most sapient counsels are not addressed to you. You are
something of a philosopher; but you are not, like Mr. Stephen Duck,
"something of a philosopher _and_ something of a poet"; for I do not
believe, O fortunate youth, that you ever invoked the ten ladies _minus_
one in your life; and I shrewdly suspect, that, so far from knowing the
difference between a male and a female rhyme, you are unfamiliar with
the close family connection between "trees" and "breeze," or between
"love" and "dove." My episodical remarks are for the benefit of
young Dolce Pianissimo, who has taken, I am sorry to say, to gin,
shirt-collars prodigious, and the minor magazines, and whose friends are
standing aghast and despairing at his lunacy. But, after all, 'tis my
best irony quite thrown away; for the foolish boy will believe me quite
in earnest, and will still be making love to that jade, Mistress Fame,
although he knows well enough how many she has jilted. But as he grows
in stature, he may grow in sense. If you see him very savagely cut up
in "The Revolver," you will recognize the kindly hands which held the
bistoury, scalpel, and tenaculum, and the gentleman who wept while he
wounded.

But I have long enough, I fear too long, tormented you with my drivel.
It must be your consolation, that, in spirit, you have been with me
to-night, as I have thought of the old days, pausing for a moment over
these mute but eloquent companions, to dream or to sigh, and then once
more turning the old familiar pages as I try to forget, for just a
little while, that dear familiar face. If something of indifference has
tinctured these hurried lines, if I have been unjust in my estimate of
the world's honors and the rewards of the Muses, you will forgive me,
if you will remember how the great Burke reduced the value of earthly
honors and emoluments to less than that of a peck of wheat. My fire is
gone out. My candle is flickering in the socket. The