CHAPTER VII.

Misadventure of a Cockney exquisite Davie's perusal of his first productions in "The Literary Nosegay". Re-appearance of Narcissus Dobbs Moustaches, and greasy foreigners The delights of cabbing-Davie rigged out anew-His determination to disguise his Scotch appearance-His discovery of three Bloomsbury Squares -Davie sports a moustache-His first love-chase-"How to serve out a puppy"-Davie's first visit to the Opera; his astonishment thereuponThe history of Ynez.

THERE was once a Cockney exquisite who imagined himself a killing youth amongst the fair, and was wont to push his gallantries almost beyond the limit of endurance, besieging young ladies, already engaged, with tender assiduities, crimsoning the cheeks of their lovers with his delicate attentions, flirting outrageously with fans, bouquets, and reticules, waltzing perforce with every woman of fine figure, married or single, that lay across his ball-room path (for here be it remarked that all women of fine figure have an irresistible penchant for waltzing, let their husbands' opinion of that enlivening exercise be what it may), whispering the most exquisite conversational baubles into the ears of flushed beauVOL. II.

ties during the intervals of the joyabandon over music-stools and pianoous dance, and hanging in familiar fortes while their fair occupants were accompanying the pleasing tenor voice, in which he warbled forth the choicest sentimental strains culled from the modern Rosa Matilda school. This ambitious youth's ruthless and desolating career was at last cut short by the following summary process. A wealthy_citizen gave a splendid ball at his Brompton villa, and amongst the numerous guests were the youth in question and another of a very opposite character— an Irish knight of the Tower and Sword, who had obtained a majority under Don Pedro, and whose slashing military aspect was not a little enhanced by a sabre-gash on the forehead. The citizen had an only daughter, a rather plain girl, but of splendid fortune; and the Hibernian hero had completely won her heart. To perceive this was quite a sufficient stimulus to our exquisite puppy to attach himself to Miss Figge for the greater part of the evening, secure her hand for a very undue proportion of dances, and, in short, make, to all appearance, a very rapid progress towards "cutting out" the fuming, frothing Irishman. The latter bore

the nuisance for some time with tole

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rable temper; but his smouldering volcano of rage burst forth without control or limit, when the exquisite, with an undisguised sneer at Pat, after about one hundred waltzing turns, conducted the lady to a seat, and treated her to a very visible and continued pressure of his hand. This was too much for Pat, who muttered into the other's ear that he "would make the matter personal betwixt them, and that he should hear from him the morrow." Hereupon the exquisite, with a provoking grin, informed Pat that he was not at all hastonished at his Hirish hassurance." The French casement at that moment lay conveniently open, a mud-cart was passing conveniently at the time-the exquisite stood conveniently between Pat and the window; and the latter, "in the twinkling of a bed-post," sent the former spinning through the casement, dress coat, gold buttons, white silk linings, tights, patent-leather pumps and all; when, performing an involuntary entrechat, the dandy alighted head foremost in the midst of the mudcart, escaped with difficulty from suffocation, bolted into a cab in the most pitiful plight, was forced to "cut" the society in which he had previously mingled, as he could not muster courage to meet the Irishman, who had a most murderous reputation as a "dead shot," and became much more moderate in his subsequent gallantries, taught by muddy. experience not to poach upon other

men's manors.

Davie's feelings were little less acute than those of the exquisite in question, when on his return to the Temple, he stripped off his new finery, and, wringing one wet garment after another, exclaimed:"The diel spet me, if a' dinna thunk that the auld deevil himsel' hauds his pandemonium in St. Giles's!" And Davie was not far wrong in his estimate of " The Rookery."

Under O'Flaherty's tutelary protection, Diddledoft's wardrobe was soon re-adjusted. He was fortunately more splashed than soaked; and Fitzen's handiwork was therefore not much desecrated. As O'Flaherty pointed out this circumstance

to my hero, the latter's eyes sparkled with renewed delight; and stripping himself bastily of every in incumbrance, except his shirt, he laid out his "madidæ vestes" one by one upon separate chairs before the fire, with as much care as a good housewife displays in scrubbing the faces and adjusting the noses of her several "younkers" upon a Sunday moruing. As the moisture arose from each in a slender stream of vapour,

"Weel, ma puir chiel," quoth Mackenzie M'Kay, "ye've noo for the seecond time bin' droond or nigh, an' deil tak me if a' dinna thunk a'll leeve tull see you droond at lost!"

"A d――d good-natured friend!" interposed O'Flaherty.

"Haud yer clishmaclaver," quoth Davie, "haud it, Mackenzie; droonin's a gentleman's end; it's no the end o' a pettifoggin' laayer! Do ye ken ?"

"I'm hanged too, if that's not sarvin' him right," said O'Flaherty.

"Talkin' o' laa," quoth M'Kay, "there's a gentleman at Rome they ca' the deevil's advocate, and a'm thunkin' yer standin' a'ways at Davie's eelbow in thot capocity!"

"When his relative does not choose to cicerone him," observed O'Flaherty, "I think it but charity to do as much; and I should like to know which is the more diabolical-to tend the stranger like a good Samaritan, or to desart him in his helplessness, like a haithen an' a publican?"

This well-deserved reproof silenced M'Kay; and Davie, taking fire at this allusion to M'Kay's coldness, of which he had merely a suspicion before, said: "Mackenzie may weel talk o' the laa, since it's his profession. A'dinna muckle lak it mysel'. A'm entirely o' Willie Shokspur's opinion that a lawyer's fine pate's filled wi' fine dert!' an' a'm varra muckle o' his mind, when he talks o' The laa's delay, the ensolence of oaffice, the thoosand sperns Whilk petient merit o' the enwirthy taks !'" Davie here cut a caper, and bounded half across the room in his shirt, influenced by some sudden recollection, to the no small surprise and amusement of O'Flaherty..

'Well, what the d-l's come over you now?" said the latter.

“Hoot awa, mon!" cried Davie, snapping his fingers, "et's the pebbylicawtion day o' the Leeterary Nosegay, whilk contens a' my reviews, and my poeetical contribution besides. A' maun see it. Ba the Loar', a' maun see it this enstant!"

And so great was the young author's anxiety to see himself in print, that he appeared fit to be put into a strait-waistcoat.

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'Dick!" roared O'Flaherty, and his crest-fallen tiger made his appearance at the door.

"Cut, like a flash o' lightnin', to the newsman's, and tell Miss Ready I want this day's Literary Nosegay in the twirlin' of a mop."

In every quarter O'Flaherty made the daughters and sisters of the tradesmen, with whom he had dealings, his chief agents. Kind words, gracious smiles, "blarney," "palaver," and a decent share of rigmarole, had established him most satisfactorily in the good graces of them all, and "neatness, punctuality, and despatch" were uniformly observable in their execution of his orders.

The tiger presently re-appeared, and presented to Davie the Penny Police Gazette!

Davie unfolded it hastily, and discovering the description of "rag" which had been brought him in lieu of his own prized periodical,

"Confoond yer sawl!" he exclaimed, "to brung me this garbage for the Leeterary Nosegay, ye crowled emp o' Sottan !"

The tiger gazed at Davie with a stolid and vacant look, utterly incapable of comprehending his meaning. He had been almost 'killed with kindness," by his Rookery relations, and, standing just four feet high, was literally as drunk as a lord, or a piper.

"Ye dam young vagabone!" said O'Flaherty, but in a good-humoured tone of voice, which took away very much from the harshness of the expression, and showed that his master had something of a fellow-feeling for his vice. "But there's no use in repatin' the name. It would be like pourin' wather into a bottomless tub. So, here goes to write it down for him."

He accordingly recorded the name of Penrailway's publication on a slip of paper, and presently the sheet, still reeking from the press, was placed in Davie's hands, which trembled with delight.

Davie's agitation became increased fourfold as he read, in a fine bold type, at the head of the journal:

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THE LITERARY NOSEGAY." To him it was an unexplored Atlantis of boundless wealth-a minea mint a priceless treasure for it contained his first productions as a London "litterateur." He proceeded to unfold the journal, but in a bungling manner, and his hand shook so that he pawed it all over, blotting the ink, which was still damp, in several places.

"D-n it, man," said O'Flaherty, "why don't you dry it?"

Mechanically Davie obeyed the direction, and scored its fair face with three stripes of black against the bars of the grate.

O'Flaherty, who overlooked this process, coolly remarked that it looked consumedly like "Cobbett's Gridiron"-a publication still more extensively circulated.

The damage thus done to his darling Nosegay only increased Davie's agitation, and in his haste to dry it and commence its perusal, his hand shaking more and more every instant, horror of horrors, he set it on fire!

I will not answer for Davie's hair standing on end, or for his tongue clinging to his jaws; but certain it is, that he looked and acted like one frantic, threw the Nosegay on the floor, danced over it as if bitten by a tarantula, and fortunately succeeded in immediately extinguishing the conflagration. O'Flaherty laughed until the tears stood in his eyes; M'Kay burst into a loud guffaw; even the drunken little monkey, Dick, resumed intelligence enough to perceive Davie's fluster, and join in the general mirth. Happily for Davie's peace of mind, it was only the outer page of advertisements that was burned, and his learned lucubrations had not received the slightest damage.

Let no man assert that there is any thing extravagant in this descrip

tion of the commotion in a young author's bosom. Every writer has felt somewhat similarly with regard to his first effort-every orator with regard to his maiden speech.

Davie, having completed the process of drying, unfolded the paper, and, without paying the slightest attention to any other productions but his own, ran over the columns until he lit upon "The Winsome Thorn." Then, "his eye in a fine phrenzy rolling," he paced up and down the room-still in his shirtand declaimed the verses twice over, with all the impassioned emphasis of a self-perusing poet, occasionally stopping and appealing to O'Flaherty with: "Esn't 'thot a guid thocht? Hey! A'm thunkin' thot's a feleecitous expression!"

O'Flaherty "fooled him to the top of his bent;" and Davie sat down, and proceeded to peruse the little reviews which he had written by Penrailway's desire, reading over each sentence to himself at least three times. It is wonderful how soon this first bloom of authorial egotism wears off. Familiarity, even here, breeds, if not contempt, at least indifference; and, long before we have consumed our gallon of ink, we read any other man's compositions but our own. Scott had forgotten many passages in his novels; and Goethe, when asked by a lady to expound a sublimely mysterious and much bandied passage in his Faust, answered that he supposed he must have had a meaning at the time of writing it, but that he really had forgotten what it was!

Davie was still engaged in the pleasing occupation of poring over his writings, and comparing them with Penrailway's, when two gentlemen entered the room, with whom the reader has formed some slight acquaintance in the early part of this history-Messrs. Narcissus Adonis Antinous Dobbs the lady-killer, with the splendid teeth, and Jonathan Blunt, the humbug-hating Yorkshireman. After the exchange of a few "old fellows," with one or two more of those rough civilities which bachelors resident in chambers are wont to cultivate in their mutual intercourse,

"Baay Jooove!" said Dobbs, looking at Davie, who, with bare legs crossed, and shirt-sleeves tucked up over the elbows, was reading away with might and main, his features exhibiting such a glow of enthusiasm, as his prophetic countrymen are supposed to wear when under the influence of the "second sight;" with a perfect indifference to the entrance of the two gentlemen, he was regularly progressing through the Nosegay, as far as the printer's name. Baay Jooove! a most extraordinary feegyaw!"

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"Got arrested by his tailor," quoth Blunt, "and foreswore clothes in revenge."

"Not quite that," said O'Flaherty, "the arrest is to come. It is Fitzen that has been 'stuck,' and not Diddledoft."

"What! Deedledoooft! Deedledoooft, may dea' fellow, how do?" said Dobbs, as with a patronizing air, he grasped Davie's hand, winking at Blunt, and scarcely repressing a titter.

Davie lifted his head, stared for a moment, open-mouthed, in Dobbs's face, and then exclaimed: "Weel, in a' my boarn days! Meester Norcissus Dobes, ef a' dinna mistak. Hae ye clearit yer heed, mon, o' thae wee bit Circossian cream the owl depoasited i' yer lokes?"

Dobbs was completely dumbfounded at this allusion to the mischance which his dearly-cherished curls had met at the "Liston Buller's Head;" and O'Flaherty burst into a roar of laughter. Davie, without meaning to be particularly jocose, had given poor Dobbs an excessively smart rap.

Whay, a'm blest," continued Davie, but yer hair has grown wenderfu' sin' a' met ye lost. Et's noo sprootin' owre yer face! 'An' each pertikler hair deth ston' on ind, Lak quells epen the fretfu' porecupine!'" This was an allusion to a very splendid moustache and imperial which Dobbs had been recently cultivating.

Baay Jooove!" said Narcissus, "Deedledoooft, you grow raythaw clevaw. The moustache and imperial are quite the mode now. No exqui