422 EDITORIAL COLLOQUIES, 



" Well, well ; you mean to play Pococuranto, I see, and indulge 

 your splenetic temper by riding the horse of exalted genius." 



" No by no means ; but it potters me exceedingly to see writers 

 dashing off their works in the haste they do ; volume after volume 

 -work after work and then to come bouncing and snorting before 

 the public, exclaiming 



* Ye dogs I 'm Jupiter Imperial ! 

 King, emperor, and pope etherial ! 

 Master of the ordnance of the sky !' 



and actually storming the public applause, much in the same way as 

 a tight rope-dancer, who is stared and gazed at because he capers 

 better than his fellows." 



" What! you mean the three- volume men, ' the men of multi- 

 plication/ as S calls them. The fact is, they have been ruined 



by Scott. They forget however that Scott was, comparatively 

 speaking, an old man when he began to write, and that he had 

 stored a mind naturally capacious with a vast fund of acquired 

 information, in which his brilliancy of imagination found food for 

 inexhaustible writings." 



" Yes ; but these worthies are disciples of Jacob Behmen. He 

 taught his followers to smell angels ; and these men, we must suppose, 

 smell the odour of their own creations, and find it delightful. The 

 vexation of the matter is, that they have well-nigh driven novel- 

 writing from the field of respectable literature. This annoys me; 

 many well-meaning people are in the habit of sneering at novels. I 

 grant that a multitude of those which have recently appeared are 

 unworthy even a sneer. But this is a kind of literature which must 

 to some extent ever be popular, and, when rightly directed, may be 

 made the means of doing an immensity of moral and social good. 

 Silver forks, silk shoe-ties, vulgar bravoes, inane lovers, political 

 lies, sea and land slang, and absolute no-meaning, which Pope said 

 truly ' puzzles more than wit,' have had their run, and have nearly 

 run themselves off their legs." 



" Why, they run fast enough, to be sure. But then they fancy 

 immortality is the goal of their race, forgetting, poor devils, that ' the 

 pit of Acheron ' is right under their noses. I see one of the Fra- 

 serian sucklings is already in the field, the man, I mean, who made 

 up a Romance out of the labours of the Editor of the Newgate Ca- 

 lendar." 



