ree volumes,
would be as absurd as a novel from _any_ man's press in folio--as
ominous as 'double Thebes'---as perverse as drinking a man's health
"with two times two" (which in fact would be an insult)--as fraudulent
as a subscription of 99_l._ 19_s._ (where it would be clear that some
man had pocketed a shilling)--and as contrary to all Natural History as
that twenty-seven tailors should make either more men or fewer than the
cube root of that number. What is the occult law of the Constable
press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be
difficult to explain: Mr. Kant himself[2] with all his subtlety could
never make up his mind why no man thinks of presenting a lady with a
service of 23 cups and saucers, though it is evident that she is just
as likely to have a party of 23 people as 24: nay, if the reader
himself were to make such a present to an English grand jury, where the
party never _could_ be more than 23, he would infallibly order a
service of 24: though he must be certain that the 24th cup-and-saucer
was a mere Irish bull--an empty piece of impertinence--a disgusting
pleonasm--and a downright logical absurdity. For a 24th grand jury man
is as much a metaphysical chimaera as an "abstract Lord Mayor," or a
30th of February. Not only, therefore, _without_ reason, but even
_against_ reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain
numbers: and Mr. Constable has a right to _his_ superstition, which
possibly may rest on this consideration--that 3 is the number of the
Graces. But, let the _rationale_ of the case be what it may, we all
know that it is a fact; and a Constable novel in _two_ volumes (being a
mere _ens rationis ratiocinantis_) would have been detected as a hoax
_in limine_ by the very printer's devils in any printing-office in
Europe.

So much was settled then: to hoax Germany, 'Walladmor' must be in three
volumes. But what, if there were not time for the quickest hoaxer to
compose three volumes before the Leipsic Fair? In that case, two men
must do what one could not. But now, as the second man could not
possibly know what his leader was talking about, he must be allowed to
produce his under stratum of Walladmor, without the least earthly
reference to the upper stratum: his thorough-bass must go on without
any relation to the melodies in the treble. Yet this was awkward: and,
when all was finished, the most skilful artist might have found it
puzzling to harmonize the whole. To me