her he shall be hanged or no, or else,
in a huffing manner, he appears with the halter in his hand, and
threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This,
with the excitement of friends to his undertaking, and some few
apologies for the want of time, books, and the like, are the constant
and usual shams of all scribblers, ancient and modern.' This was not
true then," says Southey, "nor is it now." I differ from Southey, in
thinking there is some truth in both ways of wearing the halter. For
though it be neither manly nor honest to affect a voluntary humility
(which is after all, a sneaking vanity, and would soon show itself if
taken at its word), any more than it is well-bred, or seemly to put on
(for it generally is put on) the "huffing manner," both such being truly
"shams,"--there is general truth in Mr. Blount's flippancies.

Every man should know and lament (to himself) his own
shortcomings--should mourn over and mend, as he best can, the
"confusions of his wasted youth;" he should feel how ill he has put out
to usury the talent given him by the Great Taskmaster--how far he is
from being "a good and faithful servant;" and he should make this rather
understood than expressed by his manner as a writer; while at the same
time, every man should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat off to
the public, unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say
it aright; and every man should pay not less attention to the dress in
which his thoughts present themselves, than he would to that of his
person on going into company.

Bishop Butler, in his "Preface to his Sermons," in which there is
perhaps more solid living sense than in the same number of words
anywhere else after making the distinction between "obscurity" and
"perplexity and confusion of thought,"--the first being in the subject,
the others in its expression, says,--"confusion and perplexity are, in
writing, indeed without excuse, because any one may, if he pleases, know
whether he understands or sees through what he is about, and it is
unpardonable in a man to lay his thoughts before others, when he is
conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
matter before him stands. _It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home._"

There should therefore be in his Preface, as in the writer himself, two
elements. A writer should have some assurance that he has something