Mr Puff, that authors would in general be able

to do this sort of work for themselves.

Puff. Why, yes but in a clumsy way. Besides,

we look on that as an encroachment, and so
take the opposite side. I dare say, now, you
conceive half the very civil paragraphs and
advertisements you see to be written by the 100
parties concerned, or their friends? No such
thing: nine out of ten manufactured by me in
the way of business.

Sneer. Indeed!

Puff. Even the auctioneers now the auctioneers,

I say though the rogues have lately got some
credit for their language-not an article of the
merit theirs: take them out of their pulpits, and
they are as dull as catalogues !-No, sir; 'twas
I first enriched their style-'twas I first taught 110
them to crowd their advertisements with pane-
gyrical superlatives, each epithet rising above
the other, like the bidders in their own auction-
rooms! From me they learned to inlay their
phraseology with variegated chips of exotic
metaphor: by me too their inventive faculties
were called forth :-yes, sir, by me they were
instructed to clothe ideal walls with gratuitous

fruits to insinuate obsequious rivulets into
visionary groves-to teach courteous shrubs 120
to nod their approbation of the grateful soil;
or on emergencies to raise upstart oaks, where
there never had been an acorn; to create a
delightful vicinage without the assistance of a
neighbour; or fix the temple of Hygeia in
the fens of Lincolnshire!

Dang. I am sure you have done them infinite service;
for now, when a gentleman is ruined, he parts

with his house with some credit.

Sneer. Service! if they had any gratitude, they 130 would erect a statue to him; they would figure him as a presiding Mercury, the god of traffic and fiction, with a hammer in his hand instead of a caduceus.-But pray, Mr Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way?

Puff. Egad, sir, sheer necessity!—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention. You must know, Mr Sneer, that from the first time I tried my hand at an advertisement, my success 140 was such, that for some time after I led a most extraordinary life indeed!

Sneer. How, pray?

Puff. Sir, I supported myself two years entirely by

Sneer. By your misfortunes!

Puff. Yes, sir, assisted by long sickness, and other occasional disorders; and a very comfortable living I had of it.

Sneer. From sickness and misfortunes! You practised 150 as a doctor and an attorney at once?

Puff. No, egad; both maladies and miseries were my own.

Sneer. Hey! what the plague!

Dang. 'Tis true, i' faith.

Puff. Hark'ee!-By advertisements-To the charit

able and humane! and To those whom Provi-
dence hath blessed with affluence !

Sneer. Oh, I understand

you.

Puff. And, in truth, I deserved what I got; for I 160

suppose never man went through such a series
of calamities in the same space of time. Sir, I
was five times made a bankrupt, and reduced
from a state of affluence, by a train of unavoid-
able misfortunes: then, sir, though a very in-
dustrious tradesman, I was twice burned out,
and lost my little all both times: I lived upon
those fires a month. I soon after was confined

by a most excruciating disorder, and lost the
use of my
limbs that told very well; for I 170
had the case strongly attested, and went about

to collect the subscriptions myself.

Dang. Egad, I believe that was when you first called

on me.

Puff. In November last?-O no; I was at that time a close prisoner in the Marshalsea, for a debt benevolently contracted to serve a friend. I was afterwards twice tapped for a dropsy, which declined into a very profitable consumption. I was then reduced to-O no-then, I became a 180 widow with six helpless children, after having had eleven husbands pressed, and being left every time eight months gone with child, and without money to get me into an hospital! Sneer. And you bore all with patience, I make no doubt?

Puff. Why, yes; though I made some occasional

attempts at felo de se; but as I did not find
those rash actions answer, I left off killing my-
self very soon. Well, sir, at last, what with 190
bankruptcies, fires, gouts, dropsies, imprison-
ments, and other valuable calamities, having
got together a pretty handsome sum, I deter-

mined to quit a business which had always gone
rather against my conscience, and in a more
liberal way still to indulge my talents for fiction
and embellishments, through my favourite
channels of diurnal communication-and so, sir,
you have my history.

Sneer. Most obligingly communicative indeed! and 200
your confession, if published, might certainly
serve the cause of true charity, by rescuing the
most useful channels of appeal to benevolence
from the cant of imposition. But surely, Mr
Puff, there is no great mystery in your present
profession?

Puff. Mystery, sir! I will take upon me to say the matter was never scientifically treated nor reduced to rule before.

Sneer. Reduced to rule!

Puff. O lud, sir, you are very ignorant, I am afraid! -Yes, sir, puffing is of various sorts; the principal are, the puff direct, the puff preliminary, the puff collateral, and the puff collusive, and the puff oblique, or puff by implication. These all assume, as circumstances require, the various forms of Letter to the Editor, Occasional Anecdote, Impartial Critique, Observation from

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