d’Harmenthal?” Did you ever read the “Tulipe Noire,” as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth?  I think of the prodigal banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder.  To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me!  Where does he find the money for these prodigious feasts?  They say that all the works bearing Dumas’s name are not written by him.  Well?  Does not the chief cook have aides under him?  Did not Rubens’s pupils paint on his canvases?  Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds?  For myself, being also du metier, I confess I would often like to have a competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of my novels; and on his arrival, at eleven o’clock, would say, “Mr. Jones, if you please, the archbishop must die this morning in about five pages.  Turn to article ‘Dropsy’ (or what you will) in Encyclopaedia.  Take care there are no medical blunders in his death.  Group his daughters, physicians, and chaplains round him.  In Wales’s ‘London,’ letter B, third shelf, you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the place.  Color in with local coloring.  The daughter will come down, and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs,” &c., &c.  Jones (an intelligent young man) examines the medical, historical, topographical books necessary; his chief points out to him in Jeremy Taylor (fol., London, M.DCLV.) a few remarks, such as might befit a dear old archbishop departing this life.  When I come back to dress for dinner, the archbishop is dead on my table in five pages; medicine, topography, theology, all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours.  Sir Christopher is the architect of St. Paul’s.  He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar.  There is a great deal of carpenter’s and joiner’s work in novels which surely a smart professional hand might supply.  A smart professional hand?  I give you my word, there seem to me parts of novels—­let us say the love-making, the “business,” the villain in the cupboard, and so forth, which I should like to order John Footman to take in hand, as I desire him to bring the coals and polish the boots.  Ask me indeed to pop a robber under a bed, to hide a will which shall be forthcoming in due season, or at my time of life to write a namby-pamby love conversation between Emily and Lord Arthur!  I feel ashamed of myself, and especially when my business obliges me to do the love-passages, I blush so, though quite alone in my study, that you would fancy I was going off in an apoplexy.  Are authors affected by their own works?  I don’t know about other gentlemen, but if I make a joke myself I cry; if I write a pathetic scene I am laughing wildly all the time—­at least Tomkins thinks so.  You know I am such a cynic!