poor old knight!"

Is this wit or nature? It is a kind of sham wit; it reads as if it were
wit, but it is not. What poor, poor stuff, about the little blackguard
boys! what flimsy ecstasies and silly "smacking of lips" about the
plovers. Is this the man who writes for the next age? O fie! Here is
another joke:--

"Sir Maurice. Mice! zounds, how can I
Keep mice! I can't afford it! They were starved
To death an age ago. The last was found
Come Christmas three years, stretched beside a bone
In that same larder, so consumed and worn
By pious fast, 'twas awful to behold it!
I canonized its corpse in spirits of wine,
And set it in the porch--a solemn warning
To thieves and beggars!"

Is not this rare wit? "Zounds! how can I keep mice?" is well enough for
a miser; not too new, or brilliant either; but this miserable dilution
of a thin joke, this wretched hunting down of the poor mouse! It is
humiliating to think of a man of esprit harping so long on such a mean,
pitiful string. A man who aspires to immortality, too! I doubt whether
it is to be gained thus; whether our author's words are not too loosely
built to make "starry pointing pyramids of." Horace clipped and squared
his blocks more carefully before he laid the monument which imber edax,
or aquila impotens, or fuga temporum might assail in vain. Even old
Ovid, when he raised his stately, shining heathen temple, had placed
some columns in it, and hewn out a statue or two which deserved the
immortality that he prophesied (somewhat arrogantly) for himself. But
let not all be looking forward to a future, and fancying that, "incerti
spatium dum finiat aevi," our books are to be immortal. Alas! the way to
immortality is not so easy, nor will our "Sea Captain" be permitted such
an unconscionable cruise. If all the immortalities were really to have
their wish, what a work would our descendants have to study them all!

Not yet, in my humble opinion, has the honorable baronet achieved this
deathless consummation. There will come a day (may it be long distant!)
when the very best of his novels will be forgotten; and it is reasonable
to suppose that his dramas will pass out of existence, some time or
other, in the lapse of the secula seculorum. In the meantime, my dear
Plush, if you ask me what the great obstacle is towards the dramatic
fame and merit of our friend, I would say that it does not lie so much
in hostile critics or feeble hea