ebling unjust criticism, has restored an injured
author to his full honours.

It is, however, lamentable enough that authors must participate in
that courage which faces the cannon's mouth, or cease to be authors;
for military enterprise is not the taste of modest, retired, and
timorous characters. The late Mr. Cumberland used to say that authors
must not be thin-skinned, but shelled like the rhinoceros; there are,
however, more delicately tempered animals among them, new-born lambs,
who shudder at a touch, and die under a pressure.

As for those great authors (though the greatest shrink from ridicule)
who still retain public favour, they must be patient, proud, and
fearless--patient of that obloquy which still will stain their honour
from literary echoers; proud, while they are sensible that their
literary offspring is not

Deformed, unfinished, sent before its time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up.

And fearless of all critics, when they recollect the reply of Bentley
to one who threatened to write him down, "that no author was ever
written down but by himself."

An author must consider himself as an arrow shot into the world; his
impulse must be stronger than the current of air that carries him
on--else he fall!

The character I had proposed to illustrate this calamity was the
caustic Dr. KENRICK, who, once during several years, was, in his
"London Review," one of the great disturbers of literary repose. The
turn of his criticism; the airiness, or the asperity of his sarcasm;
the arrogance with which he treated some of our great authors, would
prove very amusing, and serve to display a certain talent of
criticism. The life of Kenrick, too, would have afforded some
wholesome instruction concerning the morality of a critic. But the
rich materials are not at hand! He was a man of talents, who ran a
race with the press; could criticise all the genius of the age faster
than it could be produced; could make his own malignity look like wit,
and turn the wit of others into absurdity, by placing it topsy-turvy.
As thus, when he attacked "The Traveller" of Goldsmith, which he
called "a flimsy poem," he discussed the subject as a grave political
pamphlet, condemning the whole system, as raised on false principles.
"The Deserted Village" was sneeringly pronounced to be "pretty;" but
then it had "neither fancy, dignity, genius, or fire." When he
reviewed Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," he decrees that