ers? All others are counterfeits--men
'of no mark or likelihood.' This was what made the Jackals of the North
so eager to prove that I had been turned out of the _Edinburgh Review._
It was not the merit of the articles which excited their spleen--but
their being there. Of the style they knew nothing; for the thought they
cared nothing: all that they knew was that I wrote in that powerful
journal, and therefore they asserted that I did not!

We find a class of persons who labour under an obvious natural
inaptitude for whatever they aspire to. Their manner of setting about
it is a virtual disqualification. The simple affirmation, 'What this
man has said, I will do,' is not always considered as the proper test of
capacity. On the contrary, there are people whose bare pretensions are
as good or better than the actual performance of others. What I myself
have done, for instance, I never find admitted as proof of what I shall
be able to do: whereas I observe others who bring as proof of their
competence to any task (and are taken at their word) what they have
never done, and who gravely assure those who are inclined to trust them
that their talents are exactly fitted for some post because they are
just the reverse of what they have ever shown them to be. One man has
the air of an Editor as much as another has that of a butler or porter
in a gentleman's family. ----- is the model of this character, with
a prodigious look of business, an air of suspicion which passes for
sagacity, and an air of deliberation which passes for judgment. If
his own talents are no ways prominent, it is inferred he will be more
impartial and in earnest in making use of those of others. There
is Britton, the responsible conductor of several works of taste and
erudition, yet (God knows) without an idea in his head relating to
any one of them. He is learned by proxy, and successful from sheer
imbecility. If he were to get the smallest smattering of the departments
which are under his control, he would betray himself from his desire to
shine; but as it is, he leaves others to do all the drudgery for him.
He signs his name in the title-page or at the bottom of a vignette, and
nobody suspects any mistake. This contractor for useful and ornamental
literature once offered me two guineas for a _Life and Character of
Shakespear,_ with an admission to his _converzationi._ I went
once. There was a collection of learned lumber, of antiquaries,
lexicographers, and