ive pieces in fourteen trunks, seven carpet bags of
trifles in verse, and a portmanteau with best part of an epic poem, which
it does not become me to praise. I have no less than four hundred and
ninety-five acts of dramatic composition, which have been rejected even by
the Syncretic Association.

Such is the set that for forty-three years has been made against a man of
genius by an envious literary world! Are you going to follow in its wake?
Ha, ha, ha! no less than seven thousand three hundred times (the exact
number of my applications) have I asked that question. Think well before
you reject me, Mr. PUNCH--think well, and at least listen to what I have to
say.

It is this: I am not wishing any longer to come forward with tragedies,
epics, essays, or original compositions. I am old now--morose in temper,
troubled with poverty, jaundice, imprisonment, and habitual indigestion. I
hate everybody, and, with the exception of gin-and-water, everything. I
know every language, both in the known and unknown worlds; I am profoundly
ignorant of history, or indeed of any other useful science, but have a
smattering of all. I am excellently qualified to judge and lash the vices
of the age, having experienced, I may almost say, every one of them in my
own person. The immortal and immoral Goethe, that celebrated sage of
Germany, has made exactly the same confession.

I have a few and curious collection of Latin and Greek quotations.

And what is the result I draw from this? This simple one--that, of all men
living, I am the most qualified to be a CRITIC, and hereby offer myself to
your notice in that capacity.

Recollect, I am always at Home--Fleet Prison, Letter L, fourth staircase,
paupers'-ward--for a guinea, and a bottle of Hodges' Cordial, I will do
anything. I will, for that sum, cheerfully abuse my own father or mother. I
can smash Shakspeare; I can prove Milton to be a driveller, or the
contrary: but, for preference, take, as I have said, the abusive line.

Send me over then, Mr. P., any person's works whose sacrifice you may
require. I will cut him up, sir; I will flay him--flagellate him--finish
him! You had better not send me (unless you have a private grudge against
the authors, when I am of course at your service)--you had better not send
me any works of real merit; for I am infallibly prepared to show that there
is not any merit in them. I have not been one of the great unread for
forty-three years, without turning