And what a hard work, and what a slender reward!  In the little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a simple life is shown to us!  The most simple little pleasures and amusements delight and occupy him.  You have revels on shrimps; the good wife making the pie; details about the maid, and criticisms on her conduct; wonderful tricks played with the plum-pudding—­all the pleasures centring round the little humble home.  One of the first men of his time, he is appointed editor of a Magazine at a salary of 300L. per annum, signs himself exultingly “Ed. N. M. M.,” and the family rejoice over the income as over a fortune.  He goes to a Greenwich dinner—­what a feast and a rejoicing afterwards!—­

“Well, we drank ‘the Boz’ with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a good warm-hearted speech. . . .  He looked very well, and had a younger brother along with him. . . .  Then we had songs.  Barham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H——­; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a French showman.  Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the ‘Deep deep sea,’ in his deep deep voice; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said song; also Sir J. Wilson’s good health, and Cruikshank’s, and Ainsworth’s:  and a Manchester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured.  Jerdan, as Jerdanish as usual on such occasions—­you know how paradoxically he is quite at home in dining out.  As to myself, I had to make my second maiden speech, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to you, but my memory won’t.  However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that their wishes had already improved it—­that I felt a brisker circulation—­a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an inclination in my hand to shake itself with every one present.  Whereupon I had to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the company as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other end of the table.  Very gratifying, wasn’t it?  Though I cannot go quite so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved in spirits.  She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.  Poor girl! what would she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame one?”

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the hand which has been shaken by so many illustrious men!  The little feast dates back only eighteen years, and yet somehow it seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale’s, or a meeting at Will’s.