There was no resisting this sort of thing. In that day, a skilfully directed play of puffs laid prostrate the whole of the sagacious fashionable world; _producing_ the excitement of which they affected to chronicle the existence. The artilleryman, in the present instance, was, in fact, a hack writer, hired by Mr. Bubble--in fact, kept by him entirely--to perform services of this degrading description--and he sat from morning to night in a back-room on Mr. Bubble's premises, engaged in spinning out these villanous and lying paragraphs concerning every work published, or about to be published, by Mr. Bubble. Then that gentleman hit upon another admirable device. He had seven hundred copies printed off; and allowing a hundred for a _first_ edition, he varied the title-pages of each of the remaining six hundred by the words: "_Second_ Edition"--"_Third_ Edition"--"_Fourth_ Edition"--"_Fifth_ Edition"--"_Sixth_ Edition"--and "_Seventh_ Edition." By the time, however, that the fourth edition had been announced, there existed a real rage for the book. The circulating libraries at the West End of the town were besieged by applicants for a perusal of the work; and "notices," "reviews," and "extracts," began to make their appearance with increasing frequency in the newspapers. The idea of the work was admirable. _Tippetiwink_, the hero, was a young gentleman of ancient family--an only child--kidnapped away in his infancy by the malignant agency of "the demon _Mowbray_," a distant relative, of a fierce temper and wicked character, who by these means had succeeded to the enjoyment of the estate, and would have come, in time, to the honors and domains of the most ancient and noble family in the kingdom, that of the _Earl of Frizzleton_. Poor Tippetiwink was at length, however, discovered by his illustrious kinsman, by mere accident, in an obscure capacity, in the employ of a benevolent linen-draper, _Black-bag_, who was described as one of the most amiable and generous of linen-drapers; and, after a series of wonderful adventures, in which the hero displayed the most heroic constancy, the earl succeeded in reinstating his oppressed and injured kinsman in the lofty station which he ought always to have occupied. His daughter--a paragon of female loveliness--the _Lady Sapphira Sigh-away_--evinced the deepest interest in the success of _Tippetiwink_; and at length--the happy result may be guessed by the astute and experienced novel-reader. Out of these few and natural incidents, Mr. Bladdery Pip was pronounced at length, by those (_i. e._ the aforesaid newspaper scribes) who govern, if they do not indeed constitute, PUBLIC OPINION, to have produced an imperishable record of his genius; avoiding all the faults, and combining all the excellences, of all his former productions. The identity between Titmouse and _Tippetiwink_, Lord Dreddlington and _Lord Frizzleton_, Lady Cecilia and _Lady Sapphira_, and Mr. Aubrey and the "_demon Mowbray_," was quickly