"I am delighted to know you, Mr De Bohun. I form a very high estimate, indeed, of your genius and accomplishments; though I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing any of your works." "I am indebted to the good opinion--too much indebted, I fear--of our friend, Mr Catsbach," I replied. "By no means. You have had a play ignominiously rejected by a brutal and unjudging world. Sir, I honour you on the triumph, and congratulate you on the success." The man seemed quite serious as he spoke; so I looked for some explanation to his friend. "Wormwood has achieved the same victory on several occasions," said Catsbach; "and on carefully going over his plays, according to the severest principles of art, he finds that they were ludicrously and inhumanly laughed at, or still more inhumanly refused a place on the stage, in exact proportion as their merits lifted them above the intellectual level of an audience, or the narrow understanding of a manager." "Exactly so," said Wormwood; "and you will find it uniformly the case. Success in literature is almost the surest sign of an author's imbecility; and, _à fortiori_, public neglect a sign of his genius and erudition. I have already heard that your tragedy is refused; I hope to congratulate you on your Hamlet being hissed off the stage." "Really, sir," I said, somewhat nettled, "I scarcely understand whether you are in jest or earnest; and I sincerely hope to escape your congratulations on my Hamlet, as I am not aware of any right I have acquired to them on the fate of the play." "Was it not returned on your hands, sir? Catsbach certainly gave me to understand that you had attained that mark of eminence; but if you are still in danger of being accepted, and performed, I must withhold the expression of my praise till I see whether an audience will be more propitious than the manager, and overwhelm your tragedy with derision and contempt, as I have no doubt it deserves." After accompanying this with a smile, which he evidently meant to be propitiatory and complimentary, he seemed to retire for shelter behind his nose, and employed himself in throwing on each side any of the straggling locks that intruded on the sacred domain of his expansive brow. "What sort of fool is this you have brought?" I said to Catsbach, availing myself of the temporary seclusion of our visitor behind the promontory I have described.