st my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine which
poetical sympathisers are inclined to put forward, viz., that of
letters, and what is called genius, are to be exempt from prose duties
of this daily, bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and not to be made to
work and pay like their neighbours.

Well, then, the Pall Mall Gazette being duly established and Arthur
Pendennis's merits recognised as a flippant, witty, and amusing critic,
he worked away hard every week, preparing reviews of such works as came
into his department, and writing his reviews with flippancy certainly,
but with honesty, and to the best of his power. It might be that
a historian of threescore, who had spent a quarter of a century in
composing a work of which our young gentleman disposed in the course
of a couple of days' reading at the British Museum, was not altogether
fairly treated by such a facile critic; or that a poet who had been
elaborating sublime sonnets and odes until he thought them fit for the
public and for fame, was annoyed by two or three dozen pert lines in Mr.
Pen's review, in which the poet's claims were settled by the critic,
as if the latter were my lord on the bench and the author a miserable
little suitor trembling before him. The actors at the theatres
complained of him wofully, too, and very likely he was too hard upon
them. But there was not much harm done after all. It is different now,
as we know; but there were so few great historians, or great poets, or
great actors, in Pen's time, that scarce any at all came up for judgment
his critical desk. Those who got a little whipping, got what in the main
was good for them; not that the judge was any better or wiser than the
persons whom he sentenced, or indeed ever fancied himself so. Pen had a
strong sense of humour and justice, and had not therefore an overweening
respect for his own works; besides, he had his friend Warrington at his
elbow--a terrible critic if the young man was disposed to be conceited,
and more savage over Pen than ever he was to those whom he tried at his
literary assize.

By these critical labours, and by occasional contributions to leading
articles of the journal, when, without wounding his paper, this eminent
publicist could conscientiously speak his mind, Mr. Arthur Pendennis
gained the sum of four pounds four shillings weekly, and with no small
pains and labour. Likewise be furnished Magazines and Reviews with
articles of his composition, and is