"
"What--Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare, and all?"
"Their names are not to be breathed in the same sentence with you
pigmies," Mr. Warrington said; "there are men and men, sir."
"Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I
do," Pen answered, at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and
resumed his pipe and his manuscript.
There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a
great deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that "Leaves from the
Life-book of Walter Lorraine" would never have been written but for
Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we
have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his
biography, it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the
novel of "Walter Lorraine," in which the young gentleman had depicted
such of them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were
suitable for the purposes of his story.
Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period
during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to
lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be
questioned altogether), Mr.
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