human
Your Visitor has his Note-book out.
gpt
I _have_ the pleasure of addressing Mr. MARK LANE, I think? he says.
human
Just so. Well, Mr. MARK LANE, I consider myself extremely fortunate in finding you at home, I assure you, and a very charming place you have here--abundant evidence of a refined and cultivated mind, excellent selection of our best-known writers, everything, if I may say so, elegant in the extreme--as was to be expected! Even from the cursory glimpse I have had, I can see that your interior would lend itself admirably to picturesque description--which brings me to the object of my visit. I have called upon you, Mr. LANE, in the hope of eliciting your sympathy and patronage for a work I am now compiling--a work which will, I am confident, commend itself to a gentleman of your wide culture and interest in literary matters. (_Here you will look as judicial as you can, and harden your heart in advance against a new Encyclopædia, or an illustrated edition of_ SHAKSPEARE's _works_.)
gpt
The work I allude to, Mr. LANE, is entitled, _Notable Nonentities of Norwood and its Neighbourhood. (Here you will nod gravely, rather taken by the title._)
human
It will be published very shortly, by subscription, Mr. LANE, in two handsome quarto volumes, got up in the most sumptuous style. It is a work which has been long wanted, and which, I venture to predict, will be very widely read. It is my ambition to make it a complete biographical compendium of every living celebrity of note residing at Norwood at the present date. It will be embellished with copious illustrations, printed by an entirely new process upon India and Japanese paper; everything--type, ink, paper, binding, will be of the best procurable; the publishers being determined to spare no expense in making it a book of reference superior to anything of the kind previously attempted!