r," wrote Pope, "is so poor but he can keep a cur,
and no author so beggarly but he can keep a critic." And, after all,
abuse is pleasanter than contemptuous and silent neglect. I do honestly
believe, that, if it were not for a little too much false modesty, every
author, and especially the poets, would boldly and publicly anticipate
posthumous fame. Do you think that Sir Thomas Urquhart, when he wrote
his "[Greek: EKSKUBALAURON], or, The Discovery of a most Precious
Jewel," etc., fancied that the world would willingly let his
reverberating words faint into whispers, and, at last, into utter
silence?--his "metonymical, ironical, metaphorical, and synecdochal
instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds, artificially
affected, according to the nature of the subject, with emphatical
expressions in things of great concernment, with catachrestical in
matters of meaner moment; attended on each side respectively with
an epiplectic and exegetic modification, with hyperbolical, either
epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be
elated or extenuated, they qualifying metaphors, and accompanied
with apostrophes; and, lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether
apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, aenigmatic, or paroemial"? Would you
have thought that so much sesquipedality could die? Certainly the Knight
of Cromartie did not, and fully believing Posterity would feel an
interest in himself unaccorded to any one of his contemporaries, he
kindly and prudently appended the pedigree of the family of Urquharts,
preserving every step from Adam to himself. This may have been a vanity,
but after all it was a good sturdy one, worthy of a gentleman who could
not say "the sun was setting," but who could and did say "our occidental
rays of Phoebus were upon their turning oriental to the other hemisphere
of the terrestrial globe." Alas! poor Sir Thomas, who must needs babble
the foolish hopes which wiser men reticently keep cloistered in their
own bosoms! who confessed what every scribbler thinks, and so gets
laughed at,--as wantons are carried to the round-house for airing their
incontinent phraseology in the street, while Blowsalinda reads romances
in her chamber without blushing. Modesty is very well; but, after all,
do not the least self-sufficient of us hope for something more than the
dirty dollars,--for kindness, affection, loving perusal, and fostering
shelter, long after our brains have mouldered, and the lig