CHAPTER XI. CURIOUS AND ECCENTRIC ADVERTISEMENTS.

we have always had a suspicion that the first explainer was also the originator. The advertisement, without being rendered into English, could not have gratified the malice or satisfied the spite of its writer; and as, if any one else had discovered the key and made the attempt, he would have remarked the error, it is but fair to assume that “F. D. N.,” whoever else he may have been, was the individual whom a writer in the Quarterly Review, a couple of years or so afterwards, described as the friend who “was curious and intelligent enough to extract the plain English out of it,” and whose design we commenced with. Was he an author who had been slated in the Times? However, as the advertiser evidently meant Jeffreys, however he may have fancied to spell it, the explanation may be taken as all right.¹ This and the preceding advertisement must have set people thinking that it was hardly safe to trust to