"Insufferable! why, that very mummy you are pointing at, is three thousand years old." "More the shame-more the shame, Griffith; what have you to do routing out men's rotten bones, and disturbing their ashes after Christian burial; you are worse than the resurrection men." "Blessed ignorance!" "None of your taunts, Griffith, though I may bless my ignorance of such unnatural gimcracks. Why, what have you got by all these stuffed salamanders and pickled porpoises, I should like to know ?" "Got by them, thou worshipper of Plutus!" "Brother, brother, I worship none but to whom worship is due; not a parcel of heathenish gods, who stand there and are valued only, as I heard that old fool Wintletrap tell you, like their neighbours the tea-pots, because they have lost their noses. Would you have me believe this is anything but arrant nonsense? Why, they'd be all thrown together as rubble, and not fetch a shilling a waggon-load in the market." "Market!-your eternal criterion." "Better than money losing, or money squandering. Why, the Lord protect you, my good brother, I'll be bound to turn a thousand pounds upon 'Change whilst you philosophers, as ye call yourselves, are haggling about a green half-penny, or scrambling like schoolboys for a great black beetle ! ” "My scarab, by all that is sacred! why, you Solomon." "No nicknames, Griff, no nicknames." "No Griffs, brother Caleb, no Griffs, if you please; you know I will not be called Griff." "Don't call me Solomon, then." "I—I called thee anything but Solomon." "Then there's an end of it, brother Griffith.”—T. Hook. 101. SMITH AND BAYES ON LITERARY COMPOSITION. SMITH. HOW, sir, helps for wit! BAYES. Ay, sir; that's my position: and I do here aver that no man the sun e'er shone upon has parts sufficient to furnish out a stage, except it were by the help of these my rules. SMITH. What are those rules, I pray ? BAYES. Why, my first rule is the rule of transversion; or regula duplex, changing verse into prose, and prose into verse, alternately, as you please. SMITH. Well, but how is this done by rule, sir? BAYES. Why, thus, sir; nothing so easy when understood. I take a book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere (for that's all one); if there be any wit in it, (as there is no book but has some,) I transverse it; that is, if it be prose, put it into verse, (but that takes up some time;) and if it be verse, put it into prose. SMITH. Methinks, Mr Bayes, that putting verse into prose should be called transprosing. BAYES. By my troth, sir, it is a very good notion, and hereafter it shall be so. SMITH. Well, sir, and what d' ye do with it then? BAYES. Make it my own: 'tis so changed that no man can know it. My next rule is the rule of concord, by way of table-book. Pray observe. SMITH. I hear you, sir; go on. BAYES. As thus:-I come into a coffee-house, or some other place where witty men resort; I make as if I minded nothing, (do you mark ?) but as soon as any one speaks-pop, I slap it down, and make that too my own. SMITH. But, Mr Bayes, are you not sometimes in danger of their making you restore by force what you have gotten thus by art? BAYES. No, sir, the world's unmindful; they never take notice of these things. SMITH. But pray, Mr Bayes, among all your other rules, have you no one rule for invention ? BAYES. Yes, sir, that's my third rule;-that I have here in my pocket. SMITH. What rule can that be, I wonder? BAYES. Why, sir, when I have anything to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do, but presently turn over my book of dramatic common-places, and there I have, at one view, all that Persius, Montaigne, Seneca's Tragedies, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's Lives, and the rest have ever thought upon that subject; and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own-the business is done. SMITH. Indeed, Mr Bayes, this is as sure and compendious a way of wit as ever I heard of. BAYES. Sir, if you make the least scruple of the efficacy of these my rules, do but come to the play-house, and you shall judge of them by the effects.—BUCKINGHAM. N |