, and
secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten
on me.

The world is too full of books, and I yearn not causelessly to add more
than this involuntary unit: bottles, bottles--invariable bottles--was
the one idea of a most clever Head at Nieder-Selters; books,
books--accumulating books--press upon my conscience in this literary
London: despairing auctioneers hate the sound, ruined publishers dread
it, surfeited readers grumble at it, and the very cheese-monger begins
to be an epicure as to which grand work is next to be demolished.
Friendships and loves tremble at the daily recurrence of "Have you read
this?" and "Mind you buy that;" wise men shun a blue-belle, sure that
she will recommend a book; and the yet wiser treat themselves to
solitary confinement, that they may not have to meet the last new batch
of authors, and be obliged to purchase, if not to peruse, their
never-ending books. I fear to increase the plague, to be convicted an
abettor of great evils, though by the measure of a little one. I am
infected, and I know it: but for science-sake I break the quarantine,
and in my magnanimity would be victimized unknown, consigning to a
speedy grave this useless offspring, together with its too productive
parent, and saving of a race so hopeless little else than their
predetermined names--in fact, their title-pages.

But is that indeed little? Speak, authors with piles of ready-written
copy, is not the theme (so often carried out beyond, or beside, or even
against its original purpose) less perplexing than the after-thought
thesis? Bear witness, readers, bit by a mysterious advertisement in the
'_Morning Post_,' are names, indeed, not matters of much weight? Press
forward, Sosii aforesaid, and answer me truly, is not a title-page the
better part of many books? Cheap promises of stale pleasure, false hopes
of dull interest, imprimaturs of deceived fancy, lying visions of the
future unfulfilled, title-pages still do good service to the cause
of--bookselling.

And, to commence, let me elucidate mine own--I mean the first, the head
and front of this offending phalanx--mine own, _par excellence_, '_An
Authors Mind_:' such in sooth it shall be found, for richer or poorer,
for better or for worse; not of selfish, but of common application; not
so much individually of mine own, as generically of authors; a medley
of crudities; an undigested mass, as any in the maw of Polypheme; a
fermenting hotc