re,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby,
and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention--(but that
artists are authors)--laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and
inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently
ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age
more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would cease
to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in that wake, to be
reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do harm to his own
reputation? There are professors enough in this quadrangle of the
college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing obesity, without
so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours on the world: and
surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, thundering their
mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. Paul's, may well
frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as the frog with
the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like Bottom's
Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as your
sucking-dove.

* * * * *

Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great
distinguishing characteristic of an author's mind; pen and ink are to
it, what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we
do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the
other--their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest
that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged
OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more
provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe
unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to
prove some printed hand-book _quite wrong_ in the number of steps up a
round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the
once fair fame of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how
pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story
of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of
friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and
to taste the dulcet joys of those first essays at authorship. A great
charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the
mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters
that have made it memorable: moreover, f