ject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even
if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls
unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I
must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your
estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of
success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal
who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to
that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among
gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper,
a _chevalier d'industrie_? And then those hounds upon the bleeding
flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics,
(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how
suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in
no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my
betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in
general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he
their debtor. But who can be ignorant how frequently some hapless writer
is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, that a flagging magazine may
be served up with _sauce piquante_, and pander to the world for its
waning popularity by the malice of a pungent article? who, while as a
rule he may honour the bench of critics for patience, talent, and
impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, not seldom of
occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly condemnation;
where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax shield of anonymous
reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the foe fair-exposed
whom he dares not fight with?--But, as will be seen hereafter, I
trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than this: Is it not
a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no excuse for the
writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all he may be
innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good-natured world,
on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes either that the
author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary
bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art
not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as
sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for
corrupt bribery, and no allowance made fo