and to direct
the public opinion?

But when this profound scholar compares me to a scavenger who leaves a
copy of verses at his door and begs for a Christmas-box, I must again
cry out and say, "My dear sir, it is true your simile is offensive, but
can you make it out? Are you not hasty in your figures and illusions?"
If I might give a hint to so consummate a rhetorician, you should be
more careful in making your figures figures, and your similes like: for
instance, when you talk of a book "swelling the tide of exhilaration
incident to the inauguration of the new year," or of a book "bearing the
stamp of its origin in vacuity," &c.,--or of a man diving sardonically;
or of a pearl eclipsed in the display of a diseased oyster--there are
some people who will not apprehend your meaning: some will doubt whether
you had a meaning: some even will question your great powers, and say,
"Is this man to be a critic in a newspaper, which knows what English,
and Latin too, and what sense and scholarship, are?" I don't quarrel
with you--I take for granted your wit and learning, your modesty
and benevolence--but why scavenger--Jupiter Jeames--why scavenger? A
gentleman, whose biography the Examiner was fond of quoting before it
took its present serious and orthodox turn, was pursued by an outraged
wife to the very last stage of his existence with an appeal almost as
pathetic--Ah, sir, why scavenger?

How can I be like a dustman that rings for a Christmas-box at your
hall-door? I never was there in my life. I never left at your door a
copy of verses provocative of an annual gratuity, as your noble honor
styles it. Who are you? If you are the man I take you to be, it must
have been you who asked the publisher for my book, and not I who sent
it in, and begged a gratuity of your worship. You abused me out of the
Times' window; but if ever your noble honor sent me a gratuity out of
your own door, may I never drive another dust-cart. "Provocative of a
gratuity!" O splendid swell! How much was it your worship sent out to
me by the footman? Every farthing you have paid I will restore to your
lordship, and I swear I shall not be a halfpenny the poorer.

As before, and on similar seasons and occasions, I have compared myself
to a person following a not dissimilar calling: let me suppose now, for
a minute, that I am a writer of a Christmas farce, who sits in the
pit, and sees the performance of his own piece. There comes applause,
hissing, yaw