e before noticed, a freedom from malice and all uncharitableness,
and in many of them has attained that happy _desideratum_ which
Dryden considered a matter of so much difficulty:--

"How easy is it," he observes, "to call rogue and villain, and that
wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a
knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the
grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to
draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet
not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that
noble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice; he may
give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice;
neither is it true, that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A
witty man is tickled, while he is hurt, in this manner, and a fool
feels it not: the occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he
cannot take it. If it be granted, that, in effect, this way does more
mischief--that a man is secretly wounded, and, though he be not
sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it out for him,
yet, there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering
of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from
the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable,
as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a
bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging
to her husband."[11]

In conclusion, we must express our regret, that the author should not
have added notes to the work--the want of them will be seriously felt
by every one; some of the satires, indeed, must escape the reader,
unless he pay a degree of attention, which notes would have rendered
unnecessary. In his next edition, we trust that this deficiency may be
supplied; and we anticipate as much instruction and entertainment,
from the wide scope which such an undertaking will afford, as we have
derived from the perusal of the text. Cheerfully would we extend to
him, if required, the leisure claimed by Spenser, after he had
composed the first six books of his "_Faerie Queene_," provided
he would promise us similar conditions:--

"After so long a race as I have run
Through Faery Land, which those six books compile,
Give leave to rest me, being half foredonne,
And gather to myself new breath awhile;