pidity, as to be the result of
innocence or temper?--Self-defence is a very natural and just excuse
for a reply.

_Author._ Be it so! But still that does not always make it necessary;
for though slander, by their not weighing it, may pass upon some few
people of sense for truth, and might draw great numbers of the vulgar
into its party, the mischief can never be of long duration. _A
satirical slander, that has no truth to support it, is only a great
fish upon dry land: it may flounce and fling, and make a fretful
pother, but it wont bite you; you need not knock it on the head; it
will soon lie still, and die quietly of itself._

_Frankly._ The single-sheet critics will find you employment.

_Author._ Indeed they wont. I'm not so mad as to think myself a match
for the invulnerable.

_Frankly._ Have a care; there's Foulwit; though he can't feel, he can
bite.

_Author._ Ay, so will bugs and fleas; but that's only for sustenance:
everything must feed, you know; and your creeping critics are a sort
of vermin, that if they could come to a king, would not spare him;
yet, whenever they can persuade others to laugh at their jest upon me,
I will honestly make one of the number; but I must ask their pardon,
if that should be all the reply I can afford them."

This "boy of seventy odd," for such he was when he wrote "The
Egotist," unfolds his character by many lively personal touches. He
declares he could not have "given the world so finished a coxcomb as
Lord Foppington, if he had not found a good deal of the same stuff in
himself to make him with." He addresses "A Postscript, To those few
unfortunate Readers and Writers who may not have more sense than the
Author:" and he closes, in all the fulness of his spirit, with a piece
of consolation for those who are so cruelly attacked by superior
genius.

"Let us then, gentlemen, who have the misfortune to lie thus at the
mercy of those whose natural parts happen to be stronger than our
own--let us, I say, make the most of our sterility! Let us double and
treble the ranks of our thickness, that we may form an impregnable
phalanx, and stand every way in front to the enemy! or, would you
still be liable to less hazard, lay but yourselves down, as I do, flat
and quiet upon your faces, when Pride, Malice, Envy, Wit, or Prejudice
let fly their formidable shot at you, what odds is it they don't all
whistle over your head? Thus, too, though we may want the artillery of
missive wit to