Everybody, who wishes to do anything worthy of record, is anxious to know what will be said of him after his decease. I am thinking what will be said of me, after my literary death. I fancy to myself a knot of ladies, busy with their Loo and scandal. The tenth, the last number of the _Etonian_, is brought upon the carpet, and every one flies at Peregrine in the flirting of a fan. “So he’s gone, is he! Well, it’s time he should; he was getting sadly tiresome;”--“and so satirical;”--“and so learned;”--“as for all his Greek, I’m sure it must be very bad, for Lord St. Luke can’t construe me a word of it, and he was three years at Oxford;”--“and that abominable ‘Certain Age!’”--“and that odious ‘Windsor Ball’”--“Oh! positively we can never forgive the ‘Windsor Ball!’ I have not bought a copy since!” Pray be quiet, ladies; I never meant one of you--never, on the word of an editor! Howbeit, if the cap fits---- you know what I would say, though politeness shall leave it unsaid. Then I picture to my mind a set of sober critics taking my reputation to pieces, as easily as you would crack a walnut. “Peregrine Courtenay?--ay! he was a silly, laughing fellow. He had some spirit; yes--and a tolerable rhyme now and then; but he had no sense, no solidity; he was all froth, all evaporation. He was like the wine we are drinking--he had no body! ‘Where did you get this wine, Mr. Matthew?’” And so I am dismissed. Then I begin to think of what is much more interesting to me. What will be the talk of my schoolfellows? I fancy that I hear their censures, and their praises not sparingly bestowed. I fancy that I am already taken up with kindness, or laid down with a shrug! “The _Etonian_! oh! the last number is out, is it? How does it sell? Some of it was good, but I wish they had less of their balaam, as they call it! And then all the punch was low--horribly low; and all that slang about the Club!--and that foolish picture on the cover!--and then the puffing and the puns! For my part, I never saw a grain of wit in it--and the sense was in a still less proportion! In short, it was bad, oh! very bad! but, I don’t know how, it certainly did amuse one, too!” Such are the sounds which haunt my imagination in my leave-taking. And ever and anon, I put my prayer to the Goddess with the brazen trumpet, who proclaims the titles and the exploits of great men: “Fame, Fame, when I am removed from the scene of my exertions, let me not be quite forgotten! let me be talked of with praise, or let me be talked of with censure; but let me, at all events, be talked of! Whether I be remembered with pardon or with condemnation, I care little--so that I be only remembered.”