A. A thousand thanks. Your verba are not thrown to a sap. Can I possibly do you any favour for all this kindness?
B. Oh, my dear fellow! the very greatest. As I see yours will be, at all points, a most fashionable novel, do me the inestimable favour not to ask me to read it.
Chapter Forty Eight.
How to Write a Book of Travels.
Mr Ansard’s Chambers.
Ansard. (alone.) Well, I thought it hard enough to write a novel at the dictate of the bibliopolist; but to be condemned to sit down and write my travels—travels that have never extended farther than the Lincoln’s Inn Coffee House for my daily food, and a walk to Hampstead on a Sunday. These travels to be swelled into Travels up the Rhine in the year 18—. Why, it’s impossible. O that Barnstaple were here, for he has proved my guardian angel! Lazy, clever dog!
Enter Barnstaple.
Barnstaple. Pray, my dear Ansard, to whom did you apply that last epithet?