Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/92

4. Ohe, jam satis! methinks you exclaim here. It is even so; and I could detail ten thousand other qualities of fitness; but I content myself with a word or two as to my style, on which the very ecce sigmum testimony of this letter leaves little occasion to dilate; yet I must not omit to mention my very peculiar adroitness in all the mechanism of authorship. To me the mysteries of emphatic innuendo are open: the application of apt and eloquent parentheses is as the air I breathe; I know where to shake my head in italics; utter a MEGA THAUMA in capitals; and, by the mere force of appropriate collocation, make a word, nay sometimes even a syllable, express a start, or a shrug, or a casting up of eyes, sympathizing with a wonder; while for a frown, dark as ten furies, terrible as hell, I am your only penman.

With all this concentration of faculties in myself, I am not less enviable in my friends. All are jewels of the first water, and their aid is at my command for furthering any scheme in which I profess to be interested. Certain comical cousins also form parts of my talented phalanx; and there is not a hue in all the varied brightness of the Nine, but finds a correspondent ray among those of whom I have most meritoriously been dubbed the Musagetes.

Your penetration must, from all this, instantly discover the absolute, the ineffable advantage of taking me into your PAY: but the resolution must be made with haste, post-haste speed, for I am