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tomer every morning of his life; he shouldn't care for the homnibushes then, but as it was, he wished 'em all turned into 'earses for them as went in 'em, and them as drove 'em, and there warn't a man o' spirit on the stand as didn't wish the same."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"One hates an author, that's all author, fellows,
In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink.
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous;
One don't know what to say to them or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows.

Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs e'en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,

These unquenched snuffings of the midnight taper."
BYRON.

We have said that there was something peculiarly mysterious in Grunter's behaviour, that he ceased to correct Annie, and seemed like a man preoccupied by some great design.

And so he was!.... his intimacy with Fitzcribb had awakened a literary ambition in the heart of the old usher. He longed to see himself in print. He longed to walk forth a lion among men. He was too egotistical

a character to be able to conceal the dar

ling wish of his heart. Fitzcribb, clever, shrewd, poor, and the father of a large family, fanned the flame, which he hoped would be the means of making his own hearth burn the brighter. He concentrated Grunter's vague aspirings into one point, and suggested, with an art that made Grunter mistake those suggestions for conceptions of his own.

Fitzcribb had had much practice in the art of book-making, but the public was aware of him, and began to look upon him as a mere retailer; but who had ever heard of Ebenezer Grunter? there was something abstruse in the very name.

Fitzcribb then contrived to mount old Grunter on the well-known Pegasus from which he had been thrown, and himself to amble along on a common hack by his sidein short, he for a time gave up all daring enterprise in the literary line, and betook himself entirely to writing in periodicals, correcting manuscripts, seeing works of other authors through the press, and in fact became a literary drudge.

Cunningly urged on by him, Grunter undertook a grand work entitled "The History of Philosophy, and the Philosophy of History." The little Fitzcribb was to guide, with a dexterous and experienced hand, that mighty and cumbrous engine, Grunter's mind. He was to revise, re-touch, correct, and harmonize not only Grunter's original ideas, but all those which had also "struck other great minds:" he was, he himself said, to give a tone, an ensemble, a warm varnish to the whole.

From the ashes of the deceased lion (for he was a lion once) sprang a jackall, purveying literary provender for a forthcoming successor -the future lion, Ebenezer Grunter! and for all this trouble, and Grunter was obstinate, and alas! somewhat dull of comprehension, diffuse and verbose, Fitzcribb was to receive one hundred and fifty pounds sterling—a large sum for Fitzcribb to receive, a large one for the ci-devant usher to pay out of the savings of his sinecure at Mr. Lindsay's; but who would grudge a hundred and fifty pounds for a name! how many have gladly sacrificed for that vain boon, health, fortune, life itself!

Fitzcribb was honest, nay more, he was by birth and in feeling a gentleman; he did not conceal from Grunter any one of the necessary expenses-printing, paper, commission, advertising-of all these a fair and just calculation was made. He thought it right to let him know that the work might not take with an ill-judging public; that it was all a lottery, and that he might be so many hundreds out of pocket; but, before he led Grunter into these dark shades of doubt, he had kindled a bright lamp in his breast, fed with the all-illumining oil of hope.

Grunter was not to be deterred. He would be a lion, and he would begin by having a lion's heart. Well did Fitzcribb deserve his hundred and fifty pounds, for Grunter sometimes bored him into a stupor, sometimes worried him into a frenzy; but the poor author's necessities had compelled him to beg twenty pounds (in advance) of the sum agreed for, and as there was no repaying it, so was there no retracting.

He therefore wisely tried to make the best

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