noir, his Frankenstein’s familiar.  Beside, he was ashamed of the name of Briggs.  It certainly is not an euphonious or aristocratic name; and “The Soul’s Agonies, by John Briggs,” would not have sounded as well as “The Soul’s Agonies, by Elsley Vavasour.”  Vavasour was a very pretty name, and one of those which is supposed by novelists and young ladies to be aristocratic;—­why so is a puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant-farmer, and nothing more nor less.  So he had played with the name till he became fond of it, and considered that he had a right to it, through seven long years of weary struggles, penury, disappointment, as he climbed the Parnassian Mount, writing for magazines and newspapers, subediting this periodical and that; till he began to be known as a ready, graceful, and trustworthy workman, and was befriended by one kind-hearted litterateur after another.  For in London, at this moment, any young man of real power will find friends enough, and too many, among his fellow book-wrights, and is more likely to have his head turned by flattery, than his heart crushed by envy.  Of course, whatsoever flattery he may receive, he is expected to return; and whatsoever clique he may be tossed into on his debut, he is expected to stand by, and fight for, against the universe; but that is but fair.  If a young gentleman, invited to enrol himself in the Mutual-puffery Society which meets every Monday and Friday in Hatchgoose the publisher’s drawing-room, is willing to pledge himself thereto in the mystic cup of tea, is he not as solemnly bound thenceforth to support those literary Catilines in their efforts for the subversion of common sense, good taste, and established things in general, as if he had pledged them, as he would have done in Rome of old, in his own life-blood?  Bound he is, alike by honour and by green tea; and it will be better for him to fulfil his bond.  For if association is the cardinal principle of the age, will it not work as well in book-making as in clothes-making?  And shall not the motto of the poet (who will also do a little reviewing on the sly) be henceforth that which shines triumphant over all the world, on many a valiant Scotchman’s shield—­

  “Caw me, and I’ll caw thee”?

But to do John Briggs justice, he kept his hands, and his heart also, cleaner than most men do, during this stage of his career.  After the first excitement of novelty, and of mixing with people who could really talk and think, and who freely spoke out whatever was in them, right or wrong, in language which at least sounded grand and deep, he began to find in the literary world about the same satisfaction for his inner life which he would have found in the sporting world, or the commercial world, or the religious world, or the fashionable world, or any other world and to suspect strongly that wheresoever a world is, the flesh and the devil are not very far off.  Tired of talking when he wanted to think, of asserting when he wanted to discover, and of hearing his neighbours do the same; tired of little meannesses, envyings, intrigues, jobberies (for the literary world, too, has its jobs), he had been for some time withdrawing himself from the Hatchgoose soirees into his own thoughts, when his “Soul’s Agonies” appeared, and he found himself, if not a lion, at least a lion’s cub.