It is obvious that he cannot have acquired his
readiness of pen without much practice, but where the practice was
obtained is a puzzle to which each of his enemies has a different key.
Some say of him that he spent a year or two at a University, where
he was noted for the unfailing regularity with which he sought the
society of the wealthy, imbibed strong drinks, and omitted to pay
his debts. It is also alleged that he started a colourable University
imitation of the journal which happened at that particular time to be
the most highly coloured in London, and that, after struggling through
two numbers of convulsive scurrility, the infant effort withered under
the frown of the Authorities, who at the same time sent its founder
down. Others, however, declare him to have been the offspring of a
decayed purveyor of spurious racing intelligence, who naturally sent
his son to shift for himself after he had lost his last shirt in
betting against one of his own prophecies. Others again aver, and
probably with equal accuracy, that he was at no time other than
what he is when the world first becomes aware of his existence--the
blatant, cringing, insolent, able and disreputable wielder of a pen
which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and
fears of his fellow-creatures.
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