pted by a tall gentleman a
little farther down with a slight stutter and a very nervous manner.

"Excuse me," he said, "but I fancy that I may be able to do something
here. Some of my humble productions have been said to excel Sir Walter
at his best, and I was undoubtedly stronger all round. I could picture
modern society as well as ancient; and as to my plays, why Shakespeare
never came near 'The Lady of Lyons' for popularity. There is this
little thing----" (Here he rummaged among a great pile of papers in
front of him). "Ah! that's a report of mine, when I was in India! Here
it is. No, this is one of my speeches in the House, and this is my
criticism on Tennyson. Didn't I warm him up? I can't find what I wanted,
but of course you have read them all--'Rienzi,' and 'Harold,' and
'The Last of the Barons.' Every schoolboy knows them by heart, as poor
Macaulay would have said. Allow me to give you a sample:--

"In spite of the gallant knight's valiant resistance the combat was too
unequal to be sustained. His sword was broken by a slash from a brown
bill, and he was borne to the ground. He expected immediate death, but
such did not seem to be the intention of the ruffians who had captured
him. He was placed upon the back of his own charger and borne, bound
hand and foot, over the trackless moor, in the fastnesses of which the
rebels secreted themselves.

"In the depths of these wilds there stood a stone building which had
once been a farm-house, but having been for some reason abandoned had
fallen into ruin, and had now become the headquarters of Cade and
his men. A large cowhouse near the farm had been utilised as sleeping
quarters, and some rough attempts had been made to shield the principal
room of the main building from the weather by stopping up the gaping
apertures in the walls. In this apartment was spread out a rough meal
for the returning rebels, and our hero was thrown, still bound, into an
empty outhouse, there to await his fate."

Sir Walter had been listening with the greatest impatience to Bulwer
Lytton's narrative, but when it had reached this point he broke in
impatiently.

"We want a touch of your own style, man," he said. "The
animal-magnetico-electro-hysterical-biological-mysterious sort of story
is all your own, but at present you are just a poor copy of myself, and
nothing more."

There was a murmur of assent from the company, and Defoe remarked,
"Truly, Master Lytton, there is a plaguey resem