The order of things is becoming
reversed. The garret is beginning to lose its literary celebrity, and
the kitchen is taking the matter up. A floor near the sky in Grub-street
is no pen-spot now; but down fifty fathoms deep in Portland Place, or
Portman Square, or some far-retired old country house, you shall find
the author: his red cuffs turned up over his light blue jacket sleeves,
the pen in his hand, and his inspired eye looking out upon the area.
There doth he correct the brain-work which is to carry his name up above
the earth, and keep it there, bright as cleaned plate. In the
housekeeper's room, inspiration gives a double knock at his heart. An
author in a pantry certainly writes under great disadvantages, for it
cannot be said that he is there writing for his _bread_. In such a
place, the loaf is in his eye--the larder is so near, he may almost dip
his pen into it by mistake--and positive beef gleams through the veil of
the safe, softened to his eye, yet still solider than beef of the
imagination. In truth, a man has much to overcome in preparing food for
the mind, in the very thick of food for the body;--for a good authority
(no less a man than Mr.
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