Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/84

 were two others. There was a Mr. John Brown, a fashionable poet, and who, ashamed of his own name, published his melodies under the more euphonious and romantic title of "Clarence Devonshire," and there was a Mr. Thomas Smith, a fashionable novelist;—that is to say, a person who occasionally publishes three volumes, one-half of which contain the adventures of a young gentleman in the country; and the other volume and a-half, the adventures of the same young gentleman in the metropolis;—a sort of writer, whose constant tattle about beer and billiards, and eating soup, and the horribility of "committing" puns, give truly a most admirable and accurate idea of the conversation of the refined society of the refined metropolis of Great Britain. These two last gentlemen were "pets" of Mrs. Grey.

The conversation may be conceived. Each person was of course prepared with a certain quota of information, without which no man in