_A_. Nothing can be better. Barnstaple, you are really --, but I say no more. If a truly great man cannot be flattered with delicacy, it must not be attempted at all; silence then becomes the best tribute. Your advice proves you to be truly great. I am silent, therefore you understand the full force of the oratory of my thanks. _B (bowing_.) Well, Ansard, you have found out the cheapest way of paying off your bills of gratitude I ever heard of. "Poor, even in thanks," was well said by Shakespeare; but you, it appears, are rich, in having nothing at all wherewith to pay. If you could transfer the same doctrine to your tradesmen, you need not write novels. _A_. Alas! my dear fellow, mine is not yet written. There is one important feature, nay, the most important feature of all--the style of language, the diction--on that, Barnstaple, you have not yet doctrinated. _B (pompously_.) When Demosthenes was asked what were the principal attributes of eloquence, he answered, that the first was action; on being asked which was the second, he replied, action; and the third, action; and such is the idea of the Irish _mimbers_ in the House of Commons. Now there are three important requisites in the diction of a fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is--flippancy; the second, flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it will pass for wit, with some it will pass for scorn,--and even the witty will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a defect still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is sour, or dull when it is bottled and has a froth upon it? _A_. The advice is excellent; but I fear that this flippancy is as difficult to acquire an the tone of true eloquence. _B_. Difficult! I defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of --, and you will be saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as have done most of the late fashionable novel-writers, repair to their instructors--the lady's-maid, for flippancy in the vein _spirituelle_! to a London footman for the vein critical; but, if you wish a flippancy of a still higher order, at once more solemn and more empty, which I would call the vein political, read the speeches of some of our members of Parliament. Only read them, I wish no man so ill an to inflict upon him the torture of hearing them--read them, I say, and you will have taken the very highest degree in the order of inane flippancy.