This is not perhaps of very much consequence, since everybody has a
great deal too much to do to permit them to read it; but how full
of sighs, and groans, and passionate bewailings it is! And also how
deuced difficult! It is almost as inarticulate as an Æolian harp,
and quite as melancholy. There are one or two exceptions, of
course, as in the case of Mr. Calverley and Mr. Locker; but even
the latter is careful to insist upon the fact that, like those who
have gone before us, we must all quit Piccadilly. 'At present,' as
dear Charles Lamb writes, 'we have the advantage of them;' but
there is no one to remind us of that now, nor is it, as I have
said, the general opinion that it _is_ an advantage.

It is this prevailing gloom, I think, which accounts for the
enormous and increasing popularity of fiction. Observe how
story-telling creeps into the very newspapers (along with their
professional fibbing); and, even in the magazines, how it lies down
side by side with 'burning questions,' like the weaned child
putting its hand into the cockatrice's den. For your sake, my good
fellow, who write stories [here my friend glowered at me
compassionately], I am glad of it; but the fact is of melancholy
significance. It means that people are glad to find themselves
'anywhere, anywhere, out of the world,' and (I must be allowed to
add) they are generally gratified, for anything less like real life
than what some novelists portray it is difficult to imagine.

[Here he stared at me so exceedingly hard, that anyone with a less
heavenly temper, or who had no material reasons for putting up with
it, would have taken his remark as personal, and gone away.]

Another cause of the absence of good fellowship amongst us (he went