f all _Monthly
Magazines_ in the metropolis. So much for your title, I shall next make
some remarks as to the general conduct of the work itself.

With regard to the engraved heads prefixed to each number, and called
portraits, I would certainly advise that they should bear _some_
resemblance to the originals; this, notwithstanding it may be but a
trifling recommendation to some readers, will often prove an advantage;
for, however singular it may appear, I have frequently purchased a
picture myself, for no reason than that it put me in mind of the person
it professed to represent.

I am conscious, however, that there may be exceptions to this general
rule; indeed I know a very worthy vender of prints, who keeps in his
cellar some hundreds of admirals and generals, ready engraved, and by
cutting off the arm of one, or clapping a convenient patch on the eye of
another, he is always ready before any of his competitors to present the
town with striking likenesses of any or all of those persons who so
frequently claim our attention and gratitude. However, as there is no
subject on which people are apt to disagree so pointedly as on the
precision or dissimilarity of a copy from nature, you may safely steer
clear of all criticism, and perhaps please all parties by embellishing
your incipient number with a face combining Cooke's nose, Kemble's chin,
and Munden's mouth, with the arched eye of Lewis, and writing under it

_The head of an eminent actor._

Thus every one will recognise the feature of a favourite, and one
feature in a whole face is as much as they ought to expect.

Admit no _puns_ into your miscellany. Dennis, the critic, has said, and
I know not how many others after him, that a punster is no better than a
pickpocket, and with truth, for how dare any quibbling varlet attempt to
rob his neighbour of any portion of that delightful inflexibility, the
very taciturnity of which bespeaks what _wisdom_ may lie _buried_ in a
_grave_ demeanour?

Be not too _sentimental_ neither; nor copy the infantine simplicity of
those dear little children of the _Della Cruscan_ school, who, "_lisp in
numbers_." Do not let them lisp in any number of your publication. No
sir, like sir Peter Teazle, I say, "curse your sentiments;" for the man
whose effeminate ideas, expressed in effeminate accents, would
contribute to lessen the manly character of the English nation, deserves
to be lost in a labyrinth, as I am now, and left in the