And what is this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?—Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in my pocket.—Excellent critic!
Grant me patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! Sterne.
What authors in general may feel upon the subject I know not, but I have discovered, since I so rashly took up my pen, that there are three portions of a novel which are extremely difficult to arrange to the satisfaction of a fastidious public.
The first is the beginning, the second the middle, and the third is the end.
The painter who, in times of yore, exposed his canvass to universal criticism, and found to his mortification that there was not a particle of his composition which had not been pronounced defective by one pseudo-critic or another, did not receive severer castigation than I have experienced from the unsolicited remarks of “damned good-natured friends.”
“I like your first and second volume,” said a tall, long-chinned, short-sighted blue, dressed in yellow, peering into my face, as if her eyes were magnifying glasses, and she was obtaining the true focus of vision, “but you fall off in your last, which is all about that nasty line-of-battle ship.”
“I don’t like your plot, sir,” brawls out in a stentorian voice an elderly gentleman; “I don’t like your plot, sir,” repeated he with an air of authority, which he had long assumed, from supposing because people would not be at the trouble of contradicting his opinions, that they were incontrovertible—“there is nothing but death.”
“Death, my dear sir,” replied I, as if I was hailing the look-out man at the mast-head, and hoping to soften him with my intentional bull; “is not death, sir, a true picture of human life?”
“Ay, ay,” growled he, either not hearing or not taking; “it’s all very well, but—there’s too much killing in it.”
“In a novel, sir, killing’s no murder, you surely will admit; and you must also allow something for professional feeling—‘’Tis my occupation;’ and after five-and-twenty years of constant practice, whether I wield the sword or the pen, the force of habit—”
“It won’t do, sir,” interrupted he; “the public don’t like it. Otherwise,” continued this hyper-critic, softening a little, “some of the chapters are amusing, and on the whole, it may be said to be rather—that is—not unpleasantly written.”
“I like your first and third volume, but not your second,” squeaked out something intended to have been a woman, with shoulder-blades and collar-bones, as De Ville would say, most strongly developed.
“Well now, I don’t exactly agree with you, my dear Miss Pegoo; I think the second and third volumes are by far the most readable,” exclaimed another thing, perched upon a chair, with her feet dangling halfway between her seat and the carpet.
“If I might presume upon my long-standing in the service, Captain —,” said a pompous general officer,—whose back appeared to have been fished with the kitchen poker—“If I might venture to offer you advice,” continued he, leading me paternally by the arm a little on one side, “it would be, not again to attempt a defence of smuggling: I consider, sir, that as an officer in his Majesty’s service, you have strangely committed yourself.”
“It is not my defence, sir: they are the arguments of a smuggler.”
“You wrote the book, sir,” replie