My Novel, or Varieties in English Life. by Pisistratus Caxton. by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart.Vol. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ...out of my own skin into somebody else's That's my fancy I am so tired of myself--so tired I have run through all my ideas--know every one of them by heart. When some pretentious impostor of an idea perks itself up and says, Look at me--I'm a new acquaintance, I just give it a nod, and say, Not at all--you have only got a new coat on; you are the same old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away. But if one could be in a new skin if I could be for half an hour your tall porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really travel into a new world. Every man's brain must be a world in itself, eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours, Audley--run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I'll go and talk to that French mesmeriser about it. If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, wo should suspect that his lordship had plagiarised from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeatlng it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan. Atjdley (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and sensations rummaged, even by his friend, and even in fancy).--Pooh, pooh, pooh Do talk like a man of sense. Harley.--Man of sense Where shall I find a model? I don't know a man of sense --never met such a creature. Don't believe it ever existed. At one time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense;--a delusion; he would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley; how puzzled he looks Well, ..