It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won, to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation, whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice of Chance--the event being sometimes determined by combinations which never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,” for the pictorial periodicals. It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread, had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to think humbly of myself--there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow for “taking the conceit” out of one--my vanity did not presume to think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,” who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in _aqua fortis_, I still played with Castaly, now writing--all monkeys are imitators, and all young authors are monkeys--now writing a Bandit, to match the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers, and a man’s hat.