1832.] A Modest Defence of Literary Puffing. 163 



court with clean hands, it is precisely because he has had to deal with 

 so dirty an adversary as the former. The washerwoman cannot cleanse 

 our clothes from the filth which the scavenger throws about him, with- 

 out being herself occasionally contaminated ; but her occupation is not 

 on that account the less necessary or the less respectable. It is natural 

 that stains and dirt should hate the whitewasher who obliterates them, 

 but it is, nevertheless, they themselves who have called him and his art 

 into existence : and thus do I maintain, that as the devil is the father of 

 lies, so are reviewers the parents, and the cause of puffers. 



Be it observed, that in all these mutual mal-practices, acting and 

 re-acting with aggravated effect uoon each other, the author has no 

 share ; he has parted with his copyright, has no interest in the conflict, 

 and can find no more pleasure in being made the shuttlecock between 

 the black and white battledore, than would a well-dressed gentleman in 

 being alternately jostled by a miller and a chimney-sweeper. Were 

 the author at the same time the puffer, I should scorn to become his cham- 

 pion, for I abhor all egotism, holding it to be a disfigurement rather 

 than a beautifying of one's proper features. Minerva threw aside the 

 flute, when she found that it puffed up her own cheeks a classical 

 authority against every other description of self-inflation. Bobadils and 

 Bardolphs, ancient Pistols and Falstaffs, with all such thrasonical and 

 blustering bragadocios, have only rendered their cowardice the more 

 conspicuous by vaunting their valour. Did the Gascon expect to be 

 believed who boasted that his seven-foot mattrass was stuffed with the 

 mustachios of the enemies he had killed in battle ; or he who declared, 

 that it became him to be cautious in approaching the foe, because, as 

 he was all over heart, the prick of a pin would kill him ; or he who, 

 being observed to tremble before an onset, said that his body shuddered 

 at the thought of the dangers into which it would inevitably be hurried 

 by his valorous spirit ? Such philautical hyperboles are not less ridi- 

 culous and offensive than vain, for we may be assured that the more we 

 speak of ourselves in superlatives, the more will others speak of us in 

 diminutives ; and the less we put ourselves forward, the more will the 

 public be disposed to advance us. et Praefulgebant Cassius et Brutus 

 eo ipso quod eorum effigies non visebantur/' says Tacitus. There is the 

 authority, indeed, of a distinguished nobleman and author, for a certain 

 degree of personal boastfulness, as well as for an occasional extension of 

 truth te The exercises I chiefly used, and most recommend to my pos- 

 terity," says my Lord Herbert of Cherbury, "were riding the great 

 horse ; and I do much likewise approve of shooting in the long bow." 

 His posterity, I hope, have disregarded his injunction ; and, indeed, I 

 have been given to understand that some of them suspect the above 

 words to convey a different meaning from that which they would seem 

 to import, a question into which I enter not, being reverently chary of 

 wresting the sense of our ancient writers ! 



And now then, the literary puffer not being the author of the works 

 eulogized, what can be more amiable, more benevolent, more praise- 

 worthy than his character ? Whether it be by premeditated accident or 

 fortuitous design that his laudatory paragraphs go the round of the 

 papers, dividing the attention of a breathless public with Warren's 

 Blacking and Rowland's Kalydor, how philanthropical is his practice, 

 and how benignant must be the motive that prompts him ! Howard 

 sinks into insignificance, compared with a public benefactor who so con- 



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