the French academy, the odes of Boileau, or even my own composition.

I was still hungry: my vanity wanted more food, much more, though I
knew not where to seek it. To write down a minister was such a task,
and I had begun it in so sublime a style, that rest I could not:
though it was with great difficulty, having done with Enoch, that I
could escape from Miss and her mamma.

They were dressed to go to a party, and they insisted that I should
go with them. It would give their friends such _monstrous_ pleasure,
and they should all be so _immense_ happy, that go I must. But their
rhetoric was vain. I was upon thorns; there were no hopes that the
party would listen to my manuscript; and as I could not read it to
others, I must go home and read it to myself.

As I was going, Miss followed me to the door, called up one of her
significant traverse glances, and told me she was sure I was a
prodigious rake! But no wonder! All the fine men were rakes!

I returned to my chamber, read again and again, added new flowers,
remembered new quotations, and inserted new satire. Enoch had told me
it was fine, yet I never could think it was fine enough.

Night came, but with it little inclination in me to sleep: and in the
morning I was up and at work, reading, correcting and embellishing my
letter before I could well distinguish a word. About nine o'clock,
while I was rehearsing aloud in the very heat of oratory, two chairmen
knocked at my door and interrupted my revery: they were come to take
away the trunk of Turl. The thought struck me and I immediately
inquired--'Is the gentleman himself here?' I was answered in the