MR. SPROUTS HIS OPINIONS. BY RICHARD WHITEING. LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY. 1867. 250. N. 108. EPISTLE DEDICATORY. DEAR SIR, To ROBERT CONINGSBY, Esq. Mr. Sprouts has commissioned me to dedicate this book to you, for it was you, he says, who first urged him to write it. At the beginning of the year 1866 the town was startled by Mr. Greenwood's account of his "Night in a Workhouse;" you then, it appears, suggested that as middle class had been to see low class, low class should return the visithence the "Night in Belgrave-square," the first of this series. The public having tolerated one of Mr. Sprouts's effusions, that gentleman easily persuaded himself that it would bear with a repetition of the offence-hence the remainder of the papers. Mr. Sprouts having been quite new to letters when he began to write, his spelling is, to say the least, eccentric, and its eccentricity has been much increased by the author's trick of spelling the same word in various ways, his object being, as he says, to give every method a fair chance. Practice, however, has done for Mr. |