Then there is that delicious incident of Mr. Osborn the bookseller. “The fellow insulted me, so I beat him; but it was in the privacy of my own chamber—it was not in his shop.” Of course. To knock down a publisher was only quite right and proper. Who would not do it? But even a publisher has his rights. To do it in his own shop would be to expose him to the insults of his own servants, and that is positively not done, especially by an Oxford man. Rats, pure rats. Yet publishers are said to be fair game for authors and so far no close-season has been proclaimed for them. Few men attain to the age of seventy odd without some warning that they are mortal and that the grave is waiting. Of course there is the classic instance of Voltaire, who from the age of sixty odd complained of mortal illness, and yet, recovering, lived to a vast age, wizened, malicious, and “peaky” as a rat. But then, like Mr. Blake, Voltaire was a regular out and out hardened sinner and words could not possibly express the contempt that he felt for the mediæval devil of eighteenth-century Christianity. Probably he persisted in living on just to cheat the devil of his just due because he despised him so. As a matter of fact we often find that soon after fifty some illness attacks a man from which he never really recovers, even though he may appear to be well; there is always the trifling difference in him that marks the passage of the years. Johnson’s warning came to him—though he did not observe it—many years before when Boswell could observe the sight that he made of himself as he gobbled his meals.