399 

 "TO BE CONTINUED." 



I KNOW not whether Beelzebub ever contributes in person to the 

 Magazines we all know that he writes by proxy in one or two of 

 them but were he to do so, there is not the shadow of a doubt upon 

 my mind but that he would break off his article with a (< to be continued" 

 in italic characters, between brackets. It is an odious phrase, and 

 worthy of all reprobation, that " to be continued." I hate it as I do the 

 gentleman I have just named. I eschew it as I do not Satan, but the 

 author of Satan and all his works. How many Magazine readers has 

 it prepared for St. Lukes ; how many Magazine proprietors has it com- 

 mitted to the Fleet ; how many innocent Magazines themselves has it 

 caused to be gathered prematurely to the Spectators and Tatlers, and 

 the others fathers of periodical literature ! Oh ! you " never ending, 

 still beginning" writers, who, like the evil genius that haunted Brutus, 

 cannot leave us at Sardes without promising to be with us again at 

 Philippi, were there any wholesome discipline in the commonwealth of 

 letters, a winter in Siberia, and a speech of Sir Charles Wetherell daily, 

 would be the sure recompense of your misdeeds ! I wish I were an 

 autocrat for your sakes. Willingly would I see the British constitution 

 overturned to reach you. To your accomplices I mean those who 

 print and those who read you I bear no malice. To the former I wish 

 a cell and a keeper ; to the latter the guardianship of my Lord High 

 Chancellor, the proper protector of unhappy individuals whose foreheads 

 are inclined to the horizon at the angle of hopeless idiocy. Are you 

 wise, Mr. Editor ! Let not the wisdom of Solomon, edged with the wit 

 of S wift, prevail on you to send that paper to the press which, like a 

 scorpion with a sting in its tail, concludes with a " to be continued." To 

 the flames with it incontinently, or the tenure of your chair is not worth 

 a week's purchase. Let any devil take it, but the printer's devil. Were 

 it an esssay of my Lord Verulam, your Magazine would not survive it. 

 For myself, at least, I hate it as did Horace garlic, Voltaire, Piron, 

 Mirabeau, a bishop ; I abhor it as churchmen do Cobbett, and the 

 boroughmongers the memory of Jeremy Bentham. " To be continued" 

 is at the bottom of half our calamities. The Irish tithe-system was 

 tolerable, until Mr. Stanley informed us that it was " to be continued ;" 

 the aggravating feature of the Marquis of Londonderry's fooleries in the 

 House of Lords is, that from session to session, and from night to night, 

 they are " to be continued ;" we shudder at the thoughts of an Easter 

 pantomime, because we know, by sad experience, that for nearly half the 

 season they are sure te to be continued ;" the knock of our tailor with his 

 bill pierces us through and through like a drawn sword, for no other 

 reason but our conviction that day after day, until the rascal is paid, it 

 is " to be continued;" we could endure one day, or even two, of that 

 fellow with the monkey and hurdygurdy, but what uncenters and un- 

 mans us is our consciousness that, unless we assassinate him or procure 

 his assassination, his performance is far more certain " to be continued," 

 than our practice of breakfasting or dining. I could go on through 

 half the woes that afflict humanity ; but of all our grievances of the 

 " to be continued" class, there is none so hard to bear as an article in a 

 Magazine ; for which reason it is, Mr. Editor, that this paper, like the 

 rottenborough system, and (I think I may add) the Bench of Bishops, is 

 t( Not to be continued." 



