Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush [59]
which you will have under government, and which will give you an income of eighty pounds per annum; which you can double, I presume, by your literary labors." "Sir," says I, clasping my hands, and busting into tears, "do not-- for heaven's sake, do not!--think of any such think, or drive me from your suvvice, because I have been fool enough to write in magaseens. Glans but one moment at your honor's plate--every spoon is as bright as a mirror; condysend to igsamine your shoes--your honor may see reflected in them the fases of every one in the company. I blacked them shoes, I cleaned that there plate. If occasionally I've forgot the footman in the litterary man, and committed to paper my remindicences of fashnabble life, it was from a sincere desire to do good, and promote nollitch: and I appeal to your honor,--I lay my hand on my busm, and in the fase of this noble company beg you to say, When you rung your bell, who came to you fust? When you stopt out at Brooke's till morning, who sat up for you? When you was ill, who forgot the natral dignities of his station, and answered the two-pair bell? Oh, sir," says I, "I know what's what; don't send me away. I know them littery chaps, and, beleave me, I'd rather be a footman. The work's not so hard--the pay is better: the vittels incompyrably supearor. I have but to clean my things, and run my errints, and you put clothes on my back, and meat in my mouth. Sir! Mr. Bullwig! an't I right? shall I quit MY station and sink--that is to say, rise--to YOURS?" Bullwig was violently affected; a tear stood in his glistening i. "Yellowplush," says he, seizing my hand, "you ARE right. Quit not your present occupation; black boots, clean knives, wear plush, all your life, but don't turn literary man. Look at me. I am the first novelist in Europe. I have ranged with eagle wing over the wide regions of literature, and perched on every eminence in its turn. I have gazed with eagle eyes on the sun of philosophy, and fathomed the mysterious depths of the human mind. All languages are familiar to me, all thoughts are known to me, all men understood by me. I have gathered wisdom from the honeyed lips of Plato, as we wandered in the gardens of Acadames--wisdom, too, from the mouth of Job Johnson, as we smoked our 'backy in Seven Dials. Such must be the studies, and such is the mission, in this world, of the Poet-Philosopher. But the knowledge is only emptiness; the initiation is but misery; the initiated, a man shunned and bann'd by his fellows. Oh," said Bullwig, clasping his hands, and throwing his fine i's up to the chandelier, "the curse of Pwometheus descends upon his wace. Wath and punishment pursue them from genewation to genewation! Wo to genius, the heaven-scaler, the fire-stealer! Wo and thrice bitter desolation! Earth is the wock on which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his withing victim--men, the vultures that feed and fatten on him. Ai, ai! it is agony eternal--gwoaning and solitawy despair! And you, Yellowplush, would penetwate these mystewies: you would waise the awful veil, and stand in the twemendous Pwesence. Beware; as you value your peace, beware! Withdwaw, wash Neophyte! For heaven's sake--O for heaven's sake!--" here he looked round with agony--give me a glass of bwandy-and-water, for this clawet is beginning to disagwee with me." Bullwig having concluded this spitch, very much to his own sattasfackshn, looked round to the compny for aplaws, and then swigged off the glass of brandy-and-water, giving a sollum sigh as he took the last gulph; and then Doctor Ignatius, who longed for a chans, and, in order to show his independence, began flatly contradicting his friend, addressed me, and the rest of the genlmn present, in the following manner:-- "Hark ye," says he, "my gossoon, doan't be led asthray by the nonsinse of that divil of a Bullwig. He's jillous of ye, my bhoy: that's the rale, undoubted thruth; and it's only to keep you out of litherary life that he's palavering you in this way. I'll tell you what--Plush ye blackguard,--my honorable frind the