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ree volumes, would be as absurd as a novel from _any_ man's press in folio--as ominous as 'double Thebes'---as perverse as drinking a man's health "with two times two" (which in fact would be an insult)--as fraudulent as a subscription of 99_l._ 19_s._ (where it would be clear that some man had pocketed a shilling)--and as contrary to all Natural History as that twenty-seven tailors should make either more men or fewer than the cube root of that number. What is the occult law of the Constable press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be difficult to explain: Mr. Kant himself[2] with all his subtlety could never make up his mind why no man thinks of presenting a lady with a service of 23 cups and saucers, though it is evident that she is just as likely to have a party of 23 people as 24: nay, if the reader himself were to make such a present to an English grand jury, where the party never _could_ be more than 23, he would infallibly order a service of 24: though he must be certain that the 24th cup-and-saucer was a mere Irish bull--an empty piece of impertinence--a disgusting pleonasm--and a downright logical absurdity. For a 24th grand jury man is as much a metaphysical chimaera as an "abstract Lord Mayor," or a 30th of February. Not only, therefore, _without_ reason, but even _against_ reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain numbers: and Mr. Constable has a right to _his_ superstition, which possibly may rest on this consideration--that 3 is the number of the Graces. But, let the _rationale_ of the case be what it may, we all know that it is a fact; and a Constable novel in _two_ volumes (being a mere _ens rationis ratiocinantis_) would have been detected as a hoax _in limine_ by the very printer's devils in any printing-office in Europe. So much was settled then: to hoax Germany, 'Walladmor' must be in three volumes. But what, if there were not time for the quickest hoaxer to compose three volumes before the Leipsic Fair? In that case, two men must do what one could not. But now, as the second man could not possibly know what his leader was talking about, he must be allowed to produce his under stratum of Walladmor, without the least earthly reference to the upper stratum: his thorough-bass must go on without any relation to the melodies in the treble. Yet this was awkward: and, when all was finished, the most skilful artist might have found it puzzling to harmonize the whole. To me
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