Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/189

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ROMANCE AND REALITY.
183


"Oh, you laugh; but what sympathy could these estimable individuals have with ideal honour and wounded feeling? "

"On the one great principle, 'every thing has its price;' damages are the chevaux de frise of our law."

"Well, well—but to turn from politics to literature: here I again lament over unappreciated genius. The unknown Chattertons of the columns display a flight of invention, a degree of talent, which often puts to shame the work whose merits they insinuate rather than announce. How completely to the calibre of the many—

'For gentle dulness ever loves a joke'—

is the following:—'Our town was alarmed last night by the intelligence that Satan had arrived by the mail-coach.' Lucifer's arrival was alarming enough. Fortunately, it turned out to be only the harmless, nay, even meritorious hero of Mr. Montgomery's poem, who came with all sorts of moral reflections, instead of temptations."

"I was somewhat surprised," replied Mr. Delawarr, "to see my own name in one of the keys that now seem to follow a work as regu-