majority being decidedly liberal, every
work that now appears more or less attacks the higher orders. When,
therefore, a gentleman who has been well received in the best society
ventures upon writing a work, it is quite sufficient to state that he is
an author (without his book being read) to occasion him to "_lose
caste_" to a certain degree. Authors have been the enemies of the
higher classes. You have become an author--consequently you have ranked
yourself with our enemies. Henry Bulwer, therefore, is right where he
asserts that "to be known as an author is to your prejudice among the
higher classes."

Having made these observations to point out that the aristocracy and the
press are at variance, let us now examine into the merits of authors, as
mixing in society. And here I think it will be proved that it is more
their misfortune than their fault that there should be a prejudice
against them. They are overrated before they are seen, and underrated
afterwards.

You read the works of an author--you are pleased with them, and you wish
to become acquainted with the man. You anticipate great pleasure--you
expect from his lips, in _impromptu_, the same racy remarks, the same
chain of reasoning, the same life and vigour which have cost him so many
hours of labour and reflection, or which have been elicited in his
happiest moods, and this from a person who comes, perhaps, almost a
total stranger into a large company. Is this fair or just to him? Did
you find any of your other friends, at first meeting, play the fiddle to
a whole company of strangers? Are not authors as reserved and shy as
other people--even more so? And yet you ask them, as if they were
mountebanks or jugglers with a certain set of tricks, to amuse the
company. The very circumstance of being aware that this is expected of
him makes the man silent, and his very anxiety to come up to your
expectations takes away from his power.

The consequence is, that you are disappointed, and so are the company,
to whom you have announced that "Mr So-and-So" is to meet them. Had
you become intimate with this person you would perhaps have found the
difference, and that he whom you pronounced as so great a failure, would
have turned out equally amusing. At the same time there is some truth
in the remarks of the "Desennuyee" that "some authors will not let out
their new ideas, because they require them for their books." But, as
Bulwer observes, they must be