never having lived, nor consequently been tried. Moreover, some of my best lives and trials which I had corrected and edited with particular care, and on which I prided myself no little, he caused to be cancelled after they had passed through the press. Amongst these was the life of “Gentleman Harry.” “They are drugs, sir,” said the publisher, “drugs; that life of Harry Simms has long been the greatest drug in the calendar—has it not, Taggart?”
Taggart made no answer save by taking a pinch of snuff. The reader has, I hope, not forgotten Taggart, whom I mentioned whilst giving an account of my first morning’s visit to the publisher. I beg Taggart’s pardon for having been so long silent about him; but he was a very silent man—yet there was much in Taggart—and Taggart had always been civil and kind to me in his peculiar way.
“Well, young gentleman,” said Taggart to me one morning, when we chanced to be alone a few days after the affair of the cancelling, “how do you like authorship?”
“I scarcely call authorship the drudgery I am engaged in,” said I.
“What do you call authorship?” said Taggart.
“I scarcely know,” said I; “that is, I can scarcely express what I think it.”
“Shall I help you out?” said Taggart, turning round his chair, and looking at me.
“If you like,” said I.
“To write something grand,” said Taggart, taking snuff; “to be stared at—lifted on people’s shoulders—”
“Well,” said I, “that is something like it.”