162 A Modest Defence of Literary Puffing. [FEB. 



where they themselves have demonstrated their incapacity. H'mc illcs 

 lachri/mce hence their virtuous indignation hence their impartial stric- 

 tures hence their disinterested regard for the sacred cause of literature ! 

 Not infrequently they are known to be actuated by less amiable motives 

 than even these by some petty, paltry, dirty personality; but it is 

 immaterial whether ignorance or malice prompt them, for both concur 

 in the same language, as geese and snakes both hiss ; and of all such 

 critical sibilations, it may truly be said, without the poor conceit of a 

 Paranomasia, that the author upon whom they are inflicted " laudatur 

 ab his." Like Fuller's earth, their abuse may defile him for a moment, 

 only that when it is rubbed off it may leave him the cleaner ; and even 

 this evanescent injury it is not in the power of every puny whipster to 

 inflict, for we must not suppose that all weeds sting because nettles do. 

 It has been well said of calumnious imputations in general, that they 

 resemble the rubbish thrown up by a furious volcano, of which the 

 lighter portion is dispersed by the winds, while the heavier falls back 

 into its own mouth a remark specially applicable to the angry diatribes 

 and scurrilous personalities of reviewers. He of the ungentle craft, 

 whose assault upon puffing has stimulated us to this defence of injured 

 innocence, does not attempt to absolve his own tribe, and his own art, 

 ingeniously confessing, that "title-pages, prefaces, advertisements, and 

 even critiques, may be clubbed together as one great lie." Can he won- 

 der, after this candid admission of a fact, which the public had 

 long since discovered, that reviewers, utterly disregarded by all classes, 

 even down to boarding-school misses and pensive lieutenants, as 

 criteria of literary merit, have fallen into their present state of languor, 

 exhaustion, and approaching dissolution ? It is really edifying to hear 

 literary bravoes, whose profession it is to stab in the dark, who never 

 venture from their hiding-places without a crape over their features, 

 who may be hired for a miserable pittance to attack either friend or foe ; 

 it is truly instructive to hear such men assuming the high and noble 

 tone of indignant virtue, and stigmatizing the poor puffer as the most 

 odious of caitiffs, because, forsooth, he may not always be sincere and 

 disinterested in his praises ! Oh, the candid, honest, truth-loving var- 

 lets ! As if it were not a thousand times more honourable to deal in 

 unmerited encomium than in hired detraction ! 



I have said that reviewers themselves were the real authors of all 

 the puffing evils and enormities against which they vent their spleen, 

 and the assertion is susceptible of very easy proof. What ! is a bane to 

 exist without its antidote ; are malevolence, scurrility, perversion, and 

 all the captious chicaneries of corrupt hypercriticism, to have undis- 

 puted possession of the literary field; are authors, ex necessitate, 

 such nefarious felons as not to be allowed benefit of clergy ? No ; as 

 Nature, where she plants a vegetable poison, generally provides an anti- 

 dote, so in the moral world she causes sympathies to spring up by the 

 side of antipathies. Extremes, moreover, have an inherent tendency 

 towards each other ; the pessimist makes the optimist : and thus it is 

 that the unfairness, the bitterness, the rancour of reviewers have gene- 

 rated those much more excusable failings, if such they may be termed, 

 of superlative, fulsome, high-flown panegyrics. One excess invariably 

 begets another. If a reviewer endeavours to shew that an author is a 

 slavering idiot, his friendly puffer naturally attempts to prove that he 

 is an Admirable Crighton ; and if the latter do not always come into 



