into Yule's good opinion by judicious flattery. But with a clear
eye for the main chance Mr Fadge soon perceived that Yule could
only be of temporary use to him, and that the editor of a well-
established weekly which lost no opportunity of throwing scorn
upon Yule and all his works would be a much more profitable
conquest. He succeeded in transferring his services to the more
flourishing paper, and struck out a special line of work by the
free exercise of a malicious flippancy which was then without
rival in the periodical press. When he had thoroughly got his
hand in, it fell to Mr Fadge, in the mere way of business, to
review a volume of his old editor's, a rather pretentious and
longwinded but far from worthless essay 'On Imagination as a
National Characteristic.' The notice was a masterpiece; its
exquisite virulence set the literary circles chuckling.
Concerning the authorship there was no mystery, and Alfred Yule
had the indiscretion to make a violent reply, a savage assault
upon Fadge, in the columns of The Balance. Fadge desired nothing
better; the uproar which arose--chaff, fury, grave comments,
sneering spite--could only result in drawing universal attention
to his anonymous cleverness, and throwing ridicule upon the
heavy, conscientious man. Well, you probably remember all about
it. It ended in the disappearance of Yule's struggling paper, and
the establishment on a firm basis of Fadge's reputation.

It would be difficult to mention any department of literary
endeavour in which Yule did not, at one time or another, try his
fortune. Turn to his name in the Museum Catalogue; the list of
works appended to it will amuse you. In his thirtieth year he
published a novel; it failed completely, and the same result
awaited a similar experiment five years later. He wrote a drama