isrepresentation. The duty of the true critic is to play
the part of a leech, and not of a viper. Upon true and upon malignant
criticism there is an excellent fable by the Spaniard Iriarte. The viper
says to the leech, 'Why do people invite your bite, and flee from mine?'
'Because,' says the leech, 'people receive health from my bite, and
poison from yours.' 'There is as much difference,' says the clever
Spaniard, 'between true and malignant criticism as between poison and
medicine.' Certainly a great many meritorious writers have allowed
themselves to be poisoned by malignant criticism; the writer, however, is
not one of those who allow themselves to be poisoned by pseudo-critics;
no! no! he will rather hold them up by their tails, and show the
creatures wriggling, blood and foam streaming from their broken jaws.
First of all, however, he will notice one of their objections. 'The book
isn't true,' say they. Now one of the principal reasons with those that
have attacked 'Lavengro' for their abuse of it is, that it is
particularly true in one instance, namely, that it exposes their own
nonsense, their love of humbug, their slavishness, their dressings, their
goings out, their scraping and bowing to great people; it is the showing
up of 'gentility nonsense' in 'Lavengro' that has been one principal
reason for the raising of the above cry; for in 'Lavengro' is denounced
the besetting folly of the English people, a folly which those who call
themselves guardians of the public taste are far from being above. 'We
can't abide anything that isn't true!' they exclaim. Can't they? Then
why are they so enraptured with any fiction that is adapted to purposes
of humbug, which tends to make them satisfied with their own proceedings,
with their own nonsense, which does not tell them to reform, to become
more alive to their own failings, and less sensitive about the tyrannical
goings on of the masters, and the degraded condition, the sufferings, and
the trials of the serfs, in the star Jupiter? Had 'Lavengro,' instead of
being the work of an independent mind, been written in order to further
any of the thousand and one cants, and species of nonsense prevalent in
England, the author would have heard much less about its not being true,
both from public detractors and private censurers.

'But "Lavengro" pretends to be an autobiography,' {360} say the critics;
and here the writer begs leave to observe, that it would be well for
p