for
the entertainment of an hour, he tears it into a thousand shreds. It
adds nothing to human knowledge, it solves none of the problems of
life, it touches none of the questions of social science, it is not a
philosophical treatise, and it is not a dozen things that it might have
been. The critic cannot forgive the author for this disrespect to him.
This isn't a rose, says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; it
is not at all like a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiot
or an idiotic pretender. What business, indeed, has the author to send
the critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would be
preferred,--something not showy, but useful?

A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that it
is devoid of personal feeling. He published, some years ago, a little
volume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, and a very
entertaining book it was. But one of the heavy critics got hold of it,
and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, he confessed, like an
ass, because there was nothing in the volume about geology or mining
prospects, and very little to instruct the student of physical
geography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, he literally basted
the author, till Mandeville said that he felt almost like a depraved
scoundrel, and thought he should be held up to less execration if he had
committed a neat and scientific murder.

But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics.
Consider what these public tasters have to endure! None of us, I fancy,
would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or to take into
our mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting it with a
grimace, all that they sip. The critics of the vintage, who pursue their
calling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, give their opinion,
for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that has matured and
ripened into development of quality. But what crude, unrestrained,
unfermented--even raw and drugged liquor, must the literary taster put
to his unwilling lips day after day!

TENTH STUDY

I

It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered the rebellion
of 1745. Lest this confession should make me seem very aged, I will add
that the visit took place in 1851, and that the man was then one hundred
and thirteen years old. He was quite a lad before Dr. Johnson drank Mrs.
Thrale's tea. That he was as old as he had the credit