'_Elles._ I declare we have made out amongst us an essay on
friendship, without the fuss of writing one. I always told you our
talk was better than your writing, Milverton. Now, we only want a
beginning and ending to this peripatetic essay. What would you say to
this as a beginning?--it is to be a stately, pompous plunge into the
subject, after the Milverton fashion:--"Friendship and the Phoenix,
taking into due account the fire-office of that name, have been found
upon the earth in not unsimilar abundance." I flatter myself that "not
unsimilar abundance" is eminently Milvertonian.

'_Mil._ Now observe, Dunsford, you were speaking sometime ago about
the joking of intimates being frequently unkind. This is just an
instance to the contrary. Ellesmere, who is not a bad fellow--at least
not so bad as he seems--knows that he can say anything he pleases
about my style of writing without much annoying me. I am not very
vulnerable on these points; but all the while there is a titillating
pleasure to him in being all but impertinent and vexatious to a
friend. And he enjoys that. So do I.'

This certainly reads like free and natural conversation, besides being
noteworthy for the suggestions it contains.

Mr Helps is strictly an original writer, in the sense of thinking for
himself; but at the same time, one of his excellences consists in an
adroit and novel use of commonplaces. There is, indeed, as much
originality in putting a new face upon old verities, as in producing
new ones from the mint of one's invention. As Emerson has remarked,
valuable originality does not consist in mere novelty or unlikeness to
other men, but in range and extent of grasp and insight. This is a