set of daubs, the work of some wretched
artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his
hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them here
gratis. The good creature has not the heart to mortify the painter
at the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not
vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour,
surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while
the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honourable family, in
favour to these adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase and
the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by one
stript of his favourite old authors, to give place to a collection
of presentation copies--the flower and bran of modern poetry. A
presentation copy, reader--if haply you are yet innocent of such
favours--is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the
author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which,
if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author,
he expects from you a book of yours which does sell, in return. We
can speak to experience, having by us a tolerable assortment of these
gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death--we are willing to
acknowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a
friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a rare author) is
intelligible. There are favours, short of the pecuniary--a thing not
fit to be hinted at among gentlemen--which confer as much grace upon
the acceptor as the offerer: the kind, we confess, which is most to
our palate, is of those little conciliatory missives, which for their
vehicle generally choose a hamper--little odd presents of game, fruit,
perhaps wine--though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter
that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the country
sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though
a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect
reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or
woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the
latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is
indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately: such
participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it.
For these considerations we should be sorry if certain restrictive
regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasant