Taking this as the measure of his aims, I conceive that the Marquis De Leuville was the greatest charlatan that loomed through all the jocund years. To begin with, he was no more a Marquis than I am; and, to complete the absurdity of his pretensions, although he bore a high-sounding French title, he was not a Frenchman. But he had every possible claim to the title of “odd fish.” He was an Englishman. His name was Oliver, and the place of his nativity was the city of Bath. Various accounts have been circulated concerning his early life. Some of these legends declared him to have been a hairdresser’s assistant; others, that he had commenced as page-boy to a Bath doctor. About these matters he himself was persistently reticent. The literary world first heard of his existence by means of a novel in three volumes—at that time the simple and inexpensive method of publishing a couple of shilling’s worth of fiction. I forget the title of the book, I never read it; but I discovered some time after its appearance that, although the title-page described it as “by the Marquis De Leuville,” it was the work of one of those literary “ghosts” of whose labours, all through his artistic career, the “Marky,” as he was called, liberally availed himself. The “Marky’s” novel was reviewed in the daily and weekly Press. In many quarters it was even favourably reviewed. For there are snobs in Fleet Street, as there are everywhere else, and there were certain book-reviewers who would consider it bad form to say anything that was not quite civil about the productions of a Marquis, even though the title he bore was only a French one. The appearance, and newspaper acceptance, of the book established those friendly relations with the Press concerning which our friend Oliver had been so solicitous. Having once established his footing in Fleet Street, the “Marky” was most assiduous in his attention to those individuals with whom his work had found favour. By them he was introduced to others. And so he extended his connection like a good commercial traveller. It was rather unfortunate for the adventurer that, at the moment of his advent as a writer, Mr. Henry Labouchere had just commenced, in _Truth_, that crusade against impostors, charlatans, and social parasites generally, which at once made his paper and protected the public—one of those rare occasions by which public benefactors have made anything out of their labours. In the most matter-of-fact way Labouchere laid bare the pretensions of the mock Marquis, and left him without a rag of reputation to his back.