.When atheism was the fashion, they were
atheists; then, as the times changed, they were
chartists, Puseyites, electro-biologists, spiritualists,
Garibaldians, Fenians, and what not.
Anything as an excuse to elevate themselves on
a Windsor chair and hold forth. I shall
write an essay some day upon the elevating
power of a Windsor chair. Only let a man with
sufficient impudence raise himself a few feet
above his fellows, and he can bamboozle the
groundlings how he will.

The duffing publisher—the word is capable
of being resolved into every part of speech,
noun, adjective, verb, and adverb—the duffing
publisher takes your play and turns it into
a book with the same title—as the duffing
dramatic author takes your book without your
leave and turns it into a play;—when you
become successful as an author, he hunts up any
early scraps of yours that he may have a doubtful
title to, and publishes them in volumes,
taking advantage of some other publisher's
advertisements to direct attention to them. He
follows up your Lady in Blue with his Lady in
Green; brings out Sketches of the Playhouses
as colourably the same concern as your Sketches
of the Workhouses—borrows from you, filches
from you on every hand, feeling no compunction,
thinking no shame if he can only escape the un-
certain clutch of the law. If you have a new or
striking idea of any kind, you may make sure
that he will parody it. He has no original ideas
of his own. Duffers never have. If you placard
the walls with a mysterious advertisement that
"Jones will appear shortly," he will have his
bill-stickers at work the next day with "Smith
is coming." He makes a pretty shrewd guess
that Jones will be popular, and so he puts up
Smith to divide the constituency. Go to his
shop for Jones, and he will tell you that Smith
is the party you require. He is not particular.
He will publish a volume of sermons, or the
Adventures of Hop Light Loo.

There is the duffing author! What does he
do? What does he not do? He does the work
of the duffing publisher; and naturally enough
he does it in a duffing way. Not only does he
steal his plots from old novels that were never
read— possibly because they were published
before there were readers for them—but he
steals his descriptions word for word. This
elaborate pen and ink sketch of a gorgeously
furnished Elizabethan mansion, situated in a
romantic ravine, with uplands and downlands,
and rocks, and forests, and waterfalls, and all
that, is simply so much "copying out" in the
reading-room of the British Museum, done
probably by deputy. The blonde sister and the
brunette sister, with their rich tresses, languishing
eyes, and finely-chiselled features, are also
Museum tracings.

There is another kind of duffing author who
makes a good thing of it in these days. This is
the author who quotes Latin and Greek, and all
sorts of languages living and dead, though he
may not understand a word of any of them.
What matter if he make blunders? Only a
very few can find him out, and the thousands
who are as ignorant as he is, think him a very
learned and clever fellow. It is this same
author who abundantly interlards his composition
with what the "burly old Dr. Johnson"
said, what "the gentle Oliver" retorted, and
what was remarked by the "Witty Dean of
St. Patrick's." He is aware, you see, that Dr.
Johnson was old and burly, that Oliver
(Goldsmith, you suppose, but not being learned, are
not quite sure) was distinguished for gentleness,
and that there was once a Dean of St. Patrick's
whose name is sufficiently indicated to the
intelligent reader by mentioning that he was
eminently a wit. This author manages in the
course of an article to quote so much from burly
old Johnson, and the gentle Oliver, and the witty
Dean, that he really appears to be a very
entertaining writer. He is fond of hanging on to
the skirts of great personages. He edits Dante,
criticises Shakespeare, and writes essays upon
Rochefoucauld. He has his name on the same
title page with theirs. "DUFFER'S Dante!"
There you are—Duffer large and Dante small.

It would be a waste of honest indignation to
denounce the duffing practices of low attorneys,
doctors, and medicine vendors. You do not
expect principle or honesty in those quarters.
There is more honour to be found in a thieves'
kitchen than among such as these. What we
have to deplore is the fact that the low, ignoble
modes of dealing practised by these outcasts,
are largely adopted by the classes who live
within the pale of respectability. You see a
hundred evidences of this every day in the
streets. The dead walls are, to use a paradox,
an ever-living testimony to the dodgery of the
duffer. He is ready at all times to take a leaf
out of your book, to copy your advertisement,
to cover your announcements with his own, to
imitate your distinctive device, to parody
your idea, to assume your name. From the
study of the dead walls you learn that there
are as many duffers in the theatrical profession,
as in any other. Mr. Kemble Kean, the
eminent tragedian, Mr. Harley Buckstone, the
celebrated comic, Mademoiselle Clara Cerito,
the world- famous danseuse, Mr. Grimaldi
Jenkins, the inimitable clown, are familiar
examples of this class of duffer. Introduce into
your drama a snow-storm on the Alps, and
the duffer will get up a snow-storm on the
Apennines; blow up the Bastille, and he will
burn down the Tower of London; pitch your
heroine into a lake, and he will pitch his
into the crater of Vesuvius. He has not even
the ingenuity to reverse the process. When
you snow, he snows; when you burn, he burns;
when you pitch, he pitches.

There is nothing so insignificant or so low
that the duffer will not stoop to take advantage
of it. Bring out a one-eyed man, or a one-
armed man, or a one-legged man, and
immediately the duffer will be scouring the town to
find maimed persons to share in your notoriety.
Call your one-eyed man Polyphemus, and he
will call his Patyphemus. Call your one-armed