"Why, to say the truth," I replied, "I am rather under the influence of
blue devils this morning, and your visit is like a sun-beam in November."

"A bright thought," said Vincent, "and I shall make you a very pretty
little poet soon; publish you in a neat octavo, and dedicate you to Lady
D--e. Pray, by the by, have you ever read her plays? You know they were
only privately printed?"

"No," said I, (for in good truth, had his lordship interrogated me
touching any other literary production, I should have esteemed it a part
of my present character to return the same answer.)

"No!" repeated Vincent; "permit me to tell you, that you must never seem
ignorant of any work not published. To be recherche, one must always know
what other people don't--and then one has full liberty to sneer at the
value of what other people do know. Renounce the threshold of knowledge.
There every new proselyte can meet you. Boast of your acquaintance with
the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can dispute it with you. Have
you read Monsieur de C--'s pamphlet?"

"Really," said I, "I have been so busy."

"Ah, mon ami!" cried Vincent, "the greatest sign of an idle man is to
complain of being busy. But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good. C-
-, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it is
like a citizen's garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a
Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed in
the other. You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four
quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet every thing is good in its
kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement."