 set every season, he at last gave up that plan, finding, upon taking them indiscriminately, that he brought home with him little more than a cargo of vanity, ignorance, and affectation. Having searched, therefore, with great care, and met with three a little more to his mind, though they certainly were strange kind of oddities, he stuck to them, and being now accustomed to their singularities, and finding nothing in them that exceeded folly, they really furnished him with a fund of amusement, independant of their professional abilities.

The poet, Mr. Ego by name, was, at least in his own opinion, as much any thing else as a writer. He knew every thing, and, what is very extraordinary, better than any body.
The painter was a professed satirist; his talent lay in caricature; and he blended the ideas which were conveyed by his pencil with his conversation.
The musician was a striking contrast to the painter; for he was as remarkably civil, if not servile, as the other was severe.
I cannot do better than introduce the reader to them as they are sitting over a bottle at the John of Gaunt.

'You are a devilish severe fellow, Mr. Musquito,' said the poet to the painter.
'I?' said Musquito; 'not at all:—only a sort of a HORACE upon canvass, that's all:—a bit of a teazer, or so:—to be sure I can bite as hard as JUVENAL:—but why should one torture flies?'
'And why not?' cried the poet. 'I would not give three-pence for a satirist who could not make any body miserable.'
'I'll try my hand upon him,'
said the painter, speaking low to the musician. Then turning to the poet, he went on.
'Well said Ego! Well said ipse dixit!

Well said I b' itself I! Well said proof positive! Well said infallibility!! Upon my soul Ego you would have made an admirable pope. Sir, he possesses every personal and mental qualification in the same proportion of excellence compared to others—'
'as you do shameless effrontery,' retorted the poet; 'so you see I excel you at your own trade; for I have said as severe a thing as ever you did in your life, which has the advantage, unlike yours, of being truth. I will appeal to Mr. Toogood?'
'To him!' said the painter; 'a credulous, easy, foolish, good
