Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/93

Rh noised abroad, and e'er another hour shall have mingled itself with the past eternity, I may be flying on the swift wings of my new reputation, to the north, the east, the south, or west; for, from all quarters, am I receiving momentarily embassies, courting the countenance of my transcendent talents: some imploring a prop for works already born; others for those whose birth is delayed only until the decisive yet delicate powers of my literary obstetricism may be at hand to produce them to the admiring world in the full perfection of grand and beautiful proportion! But, Sir, my unwillingness, not to say absolute inability, to desert the city of my adoption, induces me to give you the preference: you may therefore, direct for me at once:—not Mister, but Egomet Bonmot, Esquire, London, will find me.

I have written you at some length, but I will not bid adieu without warning you against imagining that a word has been written without purpose; for not the eloquent shake of Lord Burleigh's head was half so pregnant with meaning as this epistolary specimen of auto-adulation. Indeed, as the Lakiest of bards might say, beneath the plain and simple sincerity of the foregone observations, there lies a moral far too deep for the fathom-lines of uninformed minds; and it is this single circumstance which bids me recommend its insertion in the pages of a magazine, which will enrol none among its readers by whom such matters of occult significance, however disguised in open simplicity, are not easily appreciated.