Rickman in the second-hand department, and attempt to seduce him from
his allegiance to the Quarterly Catalogue. Or he would take up the
poor journalist's copy as it lay on a table, and change it so that its
own editor wouldn't know it again. And sometimes he would swoop down
on the little bookseller as he sat at breakfast on a Sunday morning,
in his nice frock coat and clean collar, and wrap his big flapping
wings round him, and carry him off to the place where the divine ideas
come from leaving a silent and to all appearances idiotic young
gentleman in his place. Or he would sit down by that young gentleman's
side and shake him out of his little innocences and complacencies, and
turn all his little jokes into his own incomprehensible humour. And
then the boarding-house would look uncomfortable and say to itself
that Mr. Rickman had been drinking.

In short, it was a very confusing state of affairs, and one that made
it almost impossible for Mr. Rickman to establish his identity. Seven
Rickmans--only think of it! And some reckon an eighth, Mr. Rickman
drunk. But this is not altogether fair; for intoxication acted rather
on all seven at once, producing in them a gentle fusion with each
other and the universe. They had ceased to struggle. But Mr. Rickman
was not often drunk, or at least not nearly so often as his friends
supposed.

So it was all very well for Jewdwine, who was not so bewilderingly
constructed, to talk about finding your formula and pulling yourself
together. How, Mr. Rickman argued, could you hope to find the formula
of a fellow who could only be expressed in fractions, and vulgar
fractions, too? How on earth could you pull yourself together when
Nature had deliberately cut you into little pieces? Never since poor
Orpheus was torn to tatters by the Mænads was there a poet so horribly