taking a sandwich, and would have sunk under the estimates a thousand
times, had it not been for the juicy friendship of the fruit
of Portugal.

The guests were not numerous. A regius professor of Greek; an officer
just escaped from Sockatoo; a man of science, and two M.P.'s with his
Lordship; the host, and Mr. Vivian Grey, constituted the party. Oh, no!
there were two others. There was a Mr. John Brown, a fashionable poet,
and who, ashamed of his own name, published his melodies under the more
euphonious and romantic title of "Clarence Devonshire," and there was a
Mr. Thomas Smith, a fashionable novelist; that is to say, a person who
occasionally publishes three volumes, one half of which contain the
adventures of a young gentleman in the country, and the other volume and
a half the adventures of the same young gentleman in the metropolis; a
sort of writer, whose constant tattle about beer and billiards, and
eating soup, and the horribility of "committing" puns, give truly an
admirable and accurate idea of the conversation of the refined society
of the refined metropolis of Great Britain. These two last gentlemen
were "pets" of Mrs. Grey.

The conversation may be conceived. Each person was of course prepared
with a certain quota of information, without which no man in London is
morally entitled to dine out; and when the quota was expended, the
amiable host took the burthen upon his own shoulders, and endeavoured,
as the phrase goes, to draw out his guests.

O London dinners! empty artificial nothings! and that beings can be
found, and those too the flower of the land, who, day after day, can
act the same parts in the same dull, dreary farce! The officer had
discoursed sufficiently about "his intimate friend, the Soudan," and