and he has found the advantage of it himself.

The flute was the instrument that Mr. Richard Swiveller took
to when he heard that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever,

thinking that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation,
not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but
calculated to awaken a fellow feeling in the bosoms
of his neighbours.

So he got out his flute, arranged the light and a small
oblong music-book to the best advantage, and began to play
'most mournfully.'

The air was 'Away with Melancholy,' a composition which,
when it is played very slowly on the flute, in bed,
with the further disadvantage of being performed
by a gentleman but imperfectly acquainted with the
instrument, who repeats one note a great many times
before he can find the next, has not a lively effect.

So Mr. Swiveller spent half the night or more over this pleasing
exercise, merely stopping now and then to take breath and
soliloquize about the Marchioness; and it was only after he
'had nearly maddened the people of the house, and at both the
next doors, and over the way,' that he shut up the book and
went to sleep. The result of this was that the next morning
he got a notice to quit from his landlady, who had been in
waiting on the stairs for that purpose since the dawn of day.