"Elegy on a Mad Dog," and--I'm very sorry--but I
never laughed at _that_ before, either. I have pretended to laugh, you
know,' she added, hastily and apologetically, 'hundreds of times.'

'I don't doubt it,' I replied; 'this is not such a free country as your
father supposes.'

'But am I right?'

'I say nothing about "right,"' I answered, 'except that everybody has a
right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the 'Mad Dog'
better than 'John Gilpin' only because it is shorter.'

Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to
myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more
than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests
that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me
about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving,
in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no
such effect upon me--quite the reverse. Of Irving she naively remarks
that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their success to
the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages
of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to
fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House cf Commons, or of a Court of
Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and
wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces
which one hears on all sides in connection with literature!

As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ('the drawing-rooms and the
clubs') are not absolutely base and yet one would really think so, to
judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. 'I vow
to heaven,' says the prince of letter-writers, 'that I think the Parrots
of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds of Prey.
If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those
infernal and damnable "good old times" extolled.' One is almost tempted
to say the same--when one hears their praises come from certain
mouths--of the good old books. It is not everyone, of course, who has an
opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of literature, but
everyone can abstain from expressing an opinion that is not his own. If
one has no voice, what possible compensation can there be in becoming an
echo? No one, I conclude, would wish to see literature discoursed about
in the same pinchbeck and affected style as are pai