Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/651

547 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 547

" Not buff, Mr. Pickwick," interrupted Pott, drawing back his chair, "your friend is not buff. Sir?"

" No, no," rejoined Bob, " I'm a kind of plaid at present ; a compound of all sorts of colours."

" A waverer," said Pott solemnly, " a waverer. I should like to show you a series of eight articles, Sir, that have appeared in the Eatanswill Gazette. I think I may venture to say that you would not be long in establishing your opinions on a firm and solid basis, Sir."

" I dare say I should turn very blue, long before I got to the end of them," responded Bob.

Mr. Pott looked dubiously at Bob Sawyer for some seconds, and, turning to Mr. Pickwick, said —

intervals in the Eatanswill Gazette in the course of the last three months, and which have excited such general — I may say such universal attention and admiration ? "
 * You have seen the literary articles which have appeared at

"Why," replied Mr. Pickwick, slightly embarrassed by the question, " the fact is, I have been so much engaged in other ways, that I really have not had an opportunity of perusing them."

" You should do so, Sir," said Pott, with a severe countenance.

'•' I will," said Mr. Pickwick.

" They appeared in the form of a copious review of a work on Chinese metaphysics, Sir," said Pott.

" Oh," observed Mr. Pickwick — " from your pen I hope .'* "

^' From the pen of my critic. Sir," rejoined Pott with dignity.

" An abstruse subject I should conceive," said Mr. Pickwick. • *^Very, Sir," responded Pott, looking intensely sage. "He crammed for it, to use a technical but expressive term ; he read up for the subject, at my desire, in the JSnci/clopadia Britannica"

" Indeed ! " said Mr. Pickwick ; "I was not aware that that valuable work contained any information respecting Chinese metaphysics."

" He read. Sir," rejoined Pott, laying his hand on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking round with a smile of intellectual superiority, " he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C ; and combined his information. Sir ! "

Mr. Pott's features assumed so much additional grandeur at the recollection of the power and research displayed in the learned effusions in question, that some minutes elapsed before Mr. Pickwick felt emboldened to renew the conversation ; at length, as the Editor's countenance gradually relapsed into its customary expression of moral supremacy, he ventured to resume the discourse by asking —

"Is it fair to enquire what great object has brought you so far from home?"

" That object which actuates and animates me in all my gigantic labours. Sir," replied Pott, with a calm smile — "my country's good."

"I supposed it was some public mission," observed Mr. Pickwick.

"Yes, Sir," resumed Pott, "it is." Here, bending towards Mr. Pickwick" he whispered in a deep hollow voice, "A buff ball, Sir, will take place in Birmingham to-morrow evening."