Maltravers took his hat, and the two young men bent their way to ------
Chapel. Cesarini still retained the singular fashion of his dress,
though it was now made of handsomer materials, and worn with more
coxcombry and pretension. He had much improved in person--had been
admired in Paris, and told that he looked like a man of genius--and,
with his black ringlets flowing over his shoulders, his long moustache,
his broad Spanish-shaped hat, and eccentric garb, he certainly did not
look like other people. He smiled with contempt at the plain dress of
his companion. "I see," said he, "that you follow the fashion, and look
as if you passed your life with /elegans/ instead of students. I wonder
you condescend to such trifles as fashionably-shaped hats and coats."

"It would be worse trifling to set up for originality in hats and coats,
at least in sober England. I was born a gentleman, and I dress my
outward frame like others of my order. Because I am a writer, why
should I affect to be different from other men?"

"I see that you are not above the weakness of your countryman Congreve,"
said Cesarini, "who deemed it finer to be a gentleman than an author."

"I always thought that anecdote misconstrued. Congreve had a proper and
manly pride, to my judgment, when he expressed a dislike to be visited
merely as a raree-show."

"But is it policy to let the world see that an author is like other
people? Would he not create a deeper personal interest if he showed
that even in person alone he was unlike the herd? He ought to be seen
seldom--not to stale his presence--and to resort to the arts that belong
to the royalty of intellect as well as the royalty of birth."