other half in outdoing the same 'distinguished company' after dinner? What if the afflicted individual himself write us word that he never was better in his life? We have only mysteriously to shake our heads and observe that to contradict is not to prove, that it is little likely that our authority should have been mistaken, and (we are very fond of an historical comparison), beg our readers to remember that when Cardinal Richelieu was dying, nothing enraged him so much as hinting that he was ill. In short, if Horace is right, we are the very princes of poets; for I dare say, Mr. MacGrawler, that you--and you, too, my little gentleman, perfectly remember the words of the wise old Roman,-- “'Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet.'” [“He appears to me to be, to the fullest extent, a poet who airily torments my breast, irritates, soothes, fills it with unreal terrors.”] Having uttered this quotation with considerable self-complacency, and thereby entirely completed his conquest over Paul, Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, turning to MacGrawler, concluded his business with that gentleman,--which was of a literary nature, namely, a joint composition against a man who, being under five-and-twenty, and too poor to give dinners, had had the impudence to write a sacred poem. The critics were exceedingly bitter at this; and having very little to say against the poem, the Court journals called the author a “coxcomb,” and the liberal ones “the son of a pantaloon!” There was an ease, a spirit, a life about Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, which captivated the senses of our young hero; then, too, he was exceedingly smartly attired,--wore red heels and a bag,--had what seemed to Paul quite the air of a “man of fashion;” and, above all, he spouted the Latin with a remarkable grace! Some days afterwards, MacGrawler sent our hero to Mr. Tomlinson's lodgings, with his share of the joint abuse upon the poet.