or
cliques of people, who, he is happy to say, have been particularly
virulent against him and his work, for nothing indeed could have given
him greater mortification than their praise.

In the first place, he wishes to dispose of certain individuals who call
themselves men of wit and fashion--about town--who he is told have abused
his book "vaustly"--their own word. These people paint their cheeks,
wear white kid gloves, and dabble in literature, or what they conceive to
be literature. For abuse from such people, the writer was prepared. Does
any one imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published
his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked
by every literary coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure
the insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He has
been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the horse;
now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the latter carries
about with him that which the envious hermaphrodite does not possess.

They consider, forsooth, that his book is low--but he is not going to
waste words about them--one or two of whom, he is told, have written very
duncie books about Spain, and are highly enraged with him, because
certain books which he wrote about Spain were not considered duncie. No,
he is not going to waste words upon them, for verily he dislikes their
company, and so he'll pass them by, and proceed to others.

The Scotch Charlie o'er the water people have been very loud in the abuse
of Lavengro--this again might be expected; the sarcasms of the Priest
about the Charlie o'er the water nonsense of course stung them. Oh! it
is one of the claims which Lavengro has to respect, that it is the first,
if not the only work, in which that nonsense is, to a certain extent,
exposed. Two or three of their remarks on passages of Lavengro, he will
reproduce and laugh at. Of course your Charlie o'er the water people are
genteel exceedingly, and cannot abide anything low. Gypsyism they think
is particularly low, and the use of gypsy words in literature beneath its
gentility; so they object to gypsy words being used in Lavengro where
gypsies are introduced speaking--"What is Romany forsooth?" say they.
Very good! And what is Scotch? has not the public been nauseated with
Scotch for the last thirty years? "Ay, but Scotch is not"--the writer
believes he knows much better than the Scotch what