Investigator_,' no
generously-indulgent '_Critical Gazette_:' these more amiable journals
would be slower in the field--some six weeks hence, perhaps, creeping on
with philanthropic sloth: but fiercer prints, which dart hebdomadal
wrath at every trembling seeker of their parsimonious praise, had whipt
up their malice to deliver the first swift blow against our hapless
neophyte in print. Thus, when, with nervous preboding, Henry took up the
'_Watchman_,' in eager hope for favour to his poor dear book, he turned
quite sick at heart to find the lying verdict run as follows, though the
small type in which it spake was a comfort too:

"A careless compilation of insignificant cases, clumsily thrown
together, and calculated to set its author high indeed upon the rolls of
fame; proving to the world that a Mr. Henry Clements can reason very
feebly; that his premises are habitually false; and that presumptuous
preaching is the natural accompaniment of extreme ignorance."

By all that worries man, but this was too bad: "careless?"--every word
had been a care to him: "clumsy?"--in composition it was Addison's own
self: "feeble?"--if he was good for any thing, he was good for logic:
"false?"--not one premise but stood on adamant, not one conclusion but
it was fixed as fate: "presumptuous?"--it was bold and masculine,
certainly, but humble too; here and there almost deferential:
"ignorant?"--ye powers that live in looks, testify by thousands how
Clements had been studying!--And yet this most lying sentence, a
congeries or sorites of untruths, hastily penned by some dyspeptic
scribe, who perhaps had barely dipped into the book, was at the moment
circulating in every library of the kingdom, proclaiming our poor
barrister a fool!

O, thou watchful scribe, forbear! for it is cowardly--they cannot smite
again: forbear! for it is cruel--the hearts of wife and mother and lover
ache upon your idle words: forbear! it is unreasonable--for often-times
a word would prove that Rhadamanthus' self is wrong: forbear, calumnious
scribe! and heed the harms you do, when you rob some poor struggler of
his character for sense, and make the bread of the hungry to fail.

'_The Corinthian_,' another snarling watch-dog in the courts of the
temple of Fame, followed instinctively the same injurious wake: it was a
leisurely sarcastic anatomization, quite enough to blight any young
candidate's prospects, supposing that mankind respected such a verdict;
if no