popular in his youth--'no other is genuine.'

'A dreary, weary poem called the _Excursion_,
Written in a manner which is my aversion,'

is a couplet the frankness of which has always recommended itself to me
(though I like the 'Excursion'); but, except for the rhyme, it has a
fatal facility of application to other long poems. Heaven forbid that I
should 'with shadowed hint confuse' the faith in a British classic; but,
ye gods, how men have gaped (in private) over 'Childe Harold!'

'Gil Blas,' though not a native classic, is included in the articles of
the British literary faith; not as a matter of pious opinion, but _de
fide_; a necessity of intellectual salvation. I remember an interview I
once had with a boy of letters concerning this immortal work; he is a
well-known writer now, but at the time I speak of he was only budding
and sprouting in the magazines--a lad of promise, no doubt, but given,
if not to kick against authority, to question it, and, what was worse,
to question _me_ about it, in an embarrassing manner. The natural
affability of my disposition had caused him, I suppose, to treat me as
his Father Confessor in literature; and one of the sins of omission he
confided to me was in connection with the divine Le Sage.

'I say--about "Gil Blas," you know--Bias [a great critic of that day]
was saying last night that if he were to be imprisoned for life with
only one book to read he would choose the Bible or "Gil Blas."'

'It is very gratifying to me,' said I, wishing to evade my young friend,
and also because I had no love for Bias, 'that he should have selected
the Bible, even as an alternative; and all the more so, since I should