ols that,
should damage Bulwer? Why are the clasp-knives sheathed, which should
have drunk the blood of James? Hath every "[dash] good-natured friend"
forgotten to be officious, and neglected to demonstrate to relations and
acquaintances that this white villain is Mr. A., and that old virgin
poor Miss B.? Speak, Plumer Ward, courageous veteran, Have the critics
yet forgiven Mr. John Paragraph--forgotten, is impossible? and how is
it no house-keeper has arsenicked my soup, O rash recruit, for the
mysteries of perquisite divulged in Mrs. Quarles?

A dangerous craft is the tale-wright's, and difficult as dangerous.
Human nature goes in casts, as garden-pots do. Lo, you! the crowd of
thumb-pots; mean little tiny minds in multitudes, as near alike as
possible. Then there are the frequent thirty-twos, average "clever
creatures" in this mental age, wherein no one can make an ordinary
how-d'ye-do acquaintance without being advertised of his or her
surprising talents: and to pass by all intermediate sizes, here and
there standing by himself, in all the prickly pride of an immortal aloe,
some one big pot monopolizes all the cast of earth, domineering over the
conservatory as Brutus's colossal Caesar, or his metempsychosis in a
Wellington.

Again: no painter ever yet drew life-likeness, who had not the living
models at least in his mind's eye: but no good painter ever yet betrayed
the model in his figure; unless (though these instances are rarish too)
we except, _pace_ Lawrence, the mystery of portraiture. He takes indeed
a line here and a colour there; but he softens this and heightens that;
so that none but he can well discover any trace of Homer's noble head in
yonder sightless beggar, or Juno's queenly form in the Welsh woman
trudging with her strawberry load to Covent Garden market.

Flatter not thyself, fair Helen, I have not pictured thee in gentle
Grace: tremble not, my little white friend Clatter, thou art by no means
Simon Jennings. Dark Caroline Blunt, it is true thou hast fine eyes;
nevertheless, in nothing else (I am sorry to assure thee) art thou at
all like Emily Warren. Flaunting Lady Busbury, be calm; if you had not
been so wrathful, I never should have thought of you--undoubtedly you
are not the type of Mrs. Tracy.

Why will all these people don my imaginary characters? Truly, it may
seem to be a compliment, as proving that they speak from heart to heart,
of universal human nature, not unaptly; still is their