Though no spirit is so lofty but that starvation
can bend it, yet in the tranquillity of our replenished
bodies we are always wicked enough to enjoy the
extravagant emotions which agitate authors and
other hungry individuals, when by any strange
variety of life they happen to get a good dinner.

My friend, who had delighted me with his volubility
of speech, no sooner perceived that the preparations
were ended, than he fell upon his defenceless
prize like a lion on his prey. Poetry and
prose, fanciful quotations and lofty ideas, for a time
were banished from his busy brain. Our conversation,
the whole burthen of which had at first been
borne by him, was now lost in the superior fascinations
of beefsteak and onions; and a few unintelligible
monosyllables, uttered from a mouth crammed

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full of various articles, were the only attempts made
toward an interchange of soul.

The enthusiasm of his attack began at length to
abate, and the fire of anticipated delight to give
way to an expression less anxious and fluctuating.
The discomfited steak lay before him mangled and
in ruins. The onions shed a fainter perfume from
the half-cleared dish—and the potatoes were done
in the strictest sense of the word. The sated author
threw himself back in his chair, and exclaimed,
“The deed is done—the dinner is eaten—Fidus
Achates—my beloved friend—I feel I know not
how—a strange combination of various sensations
gives me a new confidence to brave the storms of
life, or to look back upon the dangers already
passed. And now, that I am comparatively composed,
and have time to think, you will do me the
favor to answer me, what in the name of all that's
beautiful in prose, poetry, or real life, induced you
to give this strange conclusion to a hungry day?”

“Because,” I replied, “your face pleased me more
than all the others which I saw—there was talent
and taste in your very dress.”

“Ah come,” said he, casting a slight glance upon
his well-worn garments, “that won't do—I am
perfectly aware that my external appearance is
by no means prepossessing, but what of that?
`she must marry me and not my clothes.' I cannot
help it, if fate, in her unequal distribution of
mutual effects, gives you a pair of breeches whose
use is to come—and me one whose value has passed

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—I don't feel ashamed of what a superior power has
done for me. It is the mark of merit to be poor.
Homer was poor—Johnson was poor—and I am
poor. Besides, a rich man cannot enter into the
kingdom of heaven—that's flat.”

“If poverty,” said I, “is a passport through the
happy gates, then—”

“Then,” interrupted he, “I should have been
there as soon as I commenced my literary life; for
though self-praise is no recommendation, I flatter
myself I am as poor as any man in New-York, and
what's more, I confess it—I'm proud of it”—

“After dinner,” said I.

“Oh, you're a wag—but rich or poor, I've had my
hopes and disappointments as well as the rest of
mankind. Sunshine and shadow have chased each
other over my path—and now, by your kindness, I
am warming myself in the rays of benevolence
and friendship. Ah, it is a treat for me, I do assure
you, to find the true feeling of generosity—the real,
genuine virtue, cleansed from the ore of vanity and
ostentation, and so unlike the pompous charity of
the common world,


“Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost,
But clear and artless pouring through the plain,
Health to the sick and solace to the swain.”

“You are the man of my mind, and to you I will
speak my sorrows, although my parched lips almost
refuse them utterance”—and he cast a sidelong
glance at an empty bottle which stood near us on

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a table. I took the hint, and called for some wine.
He swallowed a glass full, smacked his lips, and
assuming a serious and important air, thus commenced
the narrative of his literary horrors:

“Sir, my name is William Lackwit, Esquire. I
am an author, whose greatest failure has been in
not getting his works into notice, but a fatal oblivion
seemed always to engulf my productions in
its lethean stream—and fate, I do sincerely believe,
has been trying upon me some philosophical experiment,
to see how many privations human nature
could bear. I have been tossed about, sir, like a
juggler's ball—and in all the poetical labyrinths in
which I have been lost, memory cannot behold


One solitary resting place,
Nor bring me back one branch of grace.

“I was cast upon the world when about seventeen
years of age, and possessing a vast share of
vanity, which, by the by, is the staff of an author's
life, I determined to write for a living. Animated
by the fame of great men who had lived before me,
I plunged deeply into literary madness, and fell a
victim to the present prevailing epidemic, the cacoethes
scribendi, which is now sweeping many young
gentlemen from professional existence. I wrote for
the newspapers, but made no noise—heard no approbation—
and `last but not least,' received no pay.
Sometimes, perchance, a very particularly complaisant
friend would laud the little offsprings of my
pen; but it did not gain me bread and butter, and
could not satisfy the cravings of hungry nature.

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With a full heart and an empty stomach, I relinquished
my attempt, and bade farewell to my sweet
lyre, in a manner that, I thought, could not fail of
attracting universal sympathy. I walked out the
next morning, expecting to meet many a softened
heart and friendly hand, but the bell-man heaved
his unaltered cry as he did the day before; the carts
rattled along with their usual thundering rapidity;
the busy crowd shuffled by me as if I was not in
existence; and the sun shone upon the earth, and
the changing clouds floated through the air, exactly
as they were wont to do before I determined to shed
no more music upon an unfeeling world.

“At length I recovered from my disappointment,
and issued a little paper of my own; but it dropped
dead from the press, as silently as falls the unnoticed
flake of snow: no buzz of admiration followed me
as I went; no pretty black-eyed girl whispered
`that's he' as I passed; and if any applause was
elicited by my effort, it was so still, and so slily
managed, that one would scarcely have supposed it
was there.

“Something must be done, thought I—while the
great reward of literary fame played far off before
my imagination, a glorious prize, to reach which no
exertion would be too great—I walked to my little
room, where a remnant of my family's possessions
enabled me to keep my chin above the ocean of life.
In the solitary silence of my tattered and ill-furnished
apartment, I sat me down upon a broken bench,
and lost myself in `rumination sad' as to what

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course I should next pursue. Suddenly, and like
a flash of lightning, an idea struck me with almost
force enough to knock me down—I'll write a novel—
I'll take the public whether they will or not—
`fortuna favet integros,' and if fame won't come to
me, I'll go to fame. I don't wonder that I did not
succeed before. The public want something sublime,
and I'll give it to them wholesale. I'll come
upon them by surprise; I'll combine the beauties of
Addison with the satire of Swift, Goldsmith's sweetness
and Pope's fire. I'll have darkness and storm,
battle, treachery, murder, thunder, and lightning: it
must take. The author of a novel like this will make
an immense fortune. Old ivy-grown castles, moonlight
landscapes, Spanish feathers, and Italian serenades,
floated in brilliant confusion through my enamoured
fancy. Daggers and despair, eloquence, passion,
and fire, mingled in a delightful cloud of imagination,
and heaved and changed in the dim and dreary
distance like a magnificent vision of enchantment,
which only wanted the breath of my genius to fan
it into shape and exquisite beauty.

“At it I went, `tooth and nail,' and watched over
my young offspring with as much fondness as the
mother bends over the cradle that contains her only
boy. Already I began to hold up my head, and
think how differently people would look at me if
they only knew who I was, and what I was about
to do. The splendid dresses, the ten dollar beaver
hats turned upside in a basin of water, the handsome
canes, and polished Wellington boots, which

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daily obtruded themselves upon my eager eye, as if
in mockery of my miserable apparel, I began to look
upon as objects already my own. Was I thirsty and
hungry while musing on the variety of macaronies
and cream-tarts, cocoanut-cakes and coffee, in a confectioner's
shop? `Only wait,' thought I to myself,
`only wait till I get out my new novel.' Was my
coat threadbare and my hat old, only wait for my
new novel. Did a coach and four dash by me, footman
taking his ease behind, and driver with new
hat and white top boots? Drive away, coachee,
thought I, drive away, but only wait for my new
novel. Extreme impatience kept me on pins and
needles till my work was done. 'Twas indeed `a
consummation devoutly to be wished.' A kind of
restless anticipation kept me in continual excitement
till the development of my greatness, or what
was the same thing, the publication of my work.

“At length it was finished, and off it went, two
volumes duodecimo, with a modest blue cover, and
its name on the back. Long enough, thought I,
have I labored in obscurity, but now—I pulled
up my collar (it was a long time ago) and walked
majestically along in all the pride of greatness
incog.

“Alas! alas! 'twas but a dagger of the mind. It
dazzled for a moment before my enraptured sight,
and left me again to descend into the nothingness
from which, in fancy, I had risen. Although it was
printed and published, with a preface artfully acknowledging
it to be unworthy public patronage;

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

although I wrote a puff myself—do you know what
a puff is?”

“An author's opinion of his own works, expressed
in a daily paper, by himself or his friends,” I answered.

“Right,” continued he, “although I wrote a puff
myself, informing the public that rumors were afloat
that the new novel, which created such a sensation
both abroad and at home, was from the well-known
pen of the celebrated William Lackwit, Esq., poet,
editor, orator, and author in general—although I
paid the editor of one of our most fashionable evening
papers six shillings for reading it himself, and
six and sixpence for recommending it to the perusal
of his subscribers, `credat Judœus appellas'—it
`went dead,' as the Irishman says; a newspaper
squib, a little pop-gun of a thing, first brought it
into disrepute, and a few would-be critics ridiculed it
to death. Herbert and Rogers, merchant tailors,
lost a customer and I a fortune, and my unhappy
book was used to carry greasy sausages and bad
butter to the illiterate herd, who took more care of
their stomachs than of their heads, and liked meat
better than mind. Oh! that ever I was an author:
oh! that ever I panted after literary fame. I have
chased the rainbow reputation over crag and cliff.
I have waded through rivers of distress, and braved
storms of poverty and scorn, to get one grasp at the
beautiful vision; and though I see it yet, as lovely
and as bright as ever, yet still it is as cheating, and
still as far from my reach. My next trial was of a

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higher nature, which, after we have again partaken
of your excellent Madeira, I will relate to you”—

And he proceeded to describe that which I shall
lay before the indulgent reader in the next chapter.