aculty of thinking, and their acquisition of thought. The
thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded--the word has gained
perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from
the written work, which converts, and alone can convert, the thought of
the individual mind into that of the universal mind; thus constituting
the fine act of one aspiring intelligence the common possession of the
species, and collecting the produce of all wits into the public treasury
of knowledge.

The misusers of letters are therefore the foes of the race. The
licentious thinker and writer prejudices the liberty of thinking and
writing. Those who excel in letters, and in the right use of letters,
are sensitive to their misapplication. Hence arises a species of satire,
or, if you will, satirist--THE SCRIBLERO-MASTIX. He must attack
individuals. A heavily-resounding lash should scourge the immoral and
the profane. Light stripes may suffice for quelling the less nocent
dunces. In commonplace prose criticism, whatever form it may take, this
can be done without supposed personal ill-will; for the Mastix is then
only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure, and
trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes
contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked,
moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go
_out of his way_ to do so; for verse has naturally better associations.
But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly
instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his
satire _in the way_. The fact is, that Dryden's poem and Pope's were
both moved in this way. The grew out of personal quarrels. Are they on
that account to be blamed? Not if the dunces, by them "damned to
everlasting fame," were the unhappy aggressors.

Dryden's times, and possibly something in his own character, trained his
muse to polemics. His pen was active in literary controversies, which
were never without a full infusion of personalities. More thoroughly
moved at one time against one offender--though the history of the feud
is in some parts imperfectly traceable--he compelled the clouds and
hurled the lightning, in verse, on the doomed head of Thomas Shadwell.
The invention of the poem entitled MAC-FLECNOE is very simple. Richard
Flecnoe was a voluminous writer, and exceedingly bad poet--a name of
scorn already in the kingdom of let