In the better and wiser tone of feeling with Ovid only expresses in one
line to retract in that which follows, I can address these quires--
Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.
Nor do I join the regret of the illustrious exile, that he himself could
not in person accompany the volume, which he sent forth to the mart
of literature, pleasure, and luxury. Were there not a hundred similar
instances on record, the rate of my poor friend and school-fellow, Dick
Tinto, would be sufficient to warn me against seeking happiness in the
celebrity which attaches itself to a successful cultivator of the fine
arts.
Dick Tinto, when he wrote himself artist, was wont to derive his origin
from the ancient family of Tinto, of that ilk, in Lanarkshire, and
occasionally hinted that he had somewhat derogated from his gentle blood
in using the pencil for his principal means of support. But if Dick's
pedigree was correct, some of his ancestors must have suffered a more
heavy declension, since the good man his father executed the necessary,
and, I trust, the honest, but certainly not very distinguished,
employment of tailor in ordinary to the village of Langdirdum in the
west.
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