the bitterness for the sake of their briskness; but take water of the purest mountain rill, and expel the air that gives it all its life, and the vapid draught shall make the stomach sicken.-Yet what if I had consulted my feel. ings? Would not the truth of the picture have been thereby destroyed? Let those answer who have had to do with such people. As for my uncle Jeremy, the actor, the lieutenant, the sergeant, and Dr. Smith, whose vulgarity is of a different species, consisting not in those corruptions of pronunciation, which, to the ear of a wellbred man of taste, are more hateful than loud talking in a woman, or the music of a hogstye, but in a profusion of coarse oaths, with here and there a trifling indelicacy, I have only to ask the reader which he would prefer ;-to retain them as they are, their characters developed solely by their actions and their conversation, or have me imitate the modern novelists, who treat us to a wonderful description of the mental qualifications, péculiar habits, and style of speech of their several heroes, (-which leads one to imagine that the said heroes must each have had a window in his breast, for the particular and private inspection of the sage who was to make out for the star-gazing community a table of their altitudes and depressions-) and then tack to the end of it a dialogue which would suit any other set of speakers just as well?—The reader will find I have never made a real gentleman indulge, in the slightest degree, in similar grossness. It is true I have known men of birth and education (men of taste too,) as coarse in their ordinary converse as though they had been bred on dunghills; and so I have seen a butcher turn aside his head when he struck his victim, and a surgeon troubled at the pain he was inflicting on his patient, -so I have heard of a thief's sparing the pocket of a poor man, and a lawyer's refusing a bribe from a criminal, so I have known an old maid to take pleasure in the happiness of young people, and a reviewer to eulogize a work of sterling merit; but these are all rare cases, and we are not disputing about the treatment of idiosyncrasies. Admitting my defence, thus far, às satisfactory, there is yet a greater accusation to be answered. I stand charged with using coarse expressions and allusions even where I am supposed to speak myself a horrid crime in this most modest age. My publishers have told me, that a gentleman, whose knowledge of the public taste renders him fully competent to pronounce on such a question, entered their store when some sheets of this work lay upon the desk. Having cast his eye, at their request, over one or two of them, he pointed to the twenty-third line on the two-hundred-and-thirteenth page of the first volume, and said, "Though I, and no other man who is not tainted with squeamishness, can have the least objec tion to this passage, yet I would advise the writer to make some alteration; for, depend upon it, as it is it will not please the public." Whoever the individual may be, I thank him for his friendly advice, which, however, I have not chosen to follow. If I am to climb into the favour of the public only by flattering its nauseous prudery, I will turn my back upon it at once; for I would rather my limbs should rot in inactivity than thus be used. My work shall force its way to notice by its own merits, or moulder on the shelf;-no offspring of my brain shall lose their manhood because the public is fond of childish trebles.* * I may well be permitted to speak warmly on this subject; since I am a sufferer (and I believe the reader is no less) by the old maid's purity of which I complain. Two or three passages have been swept from the work by my remorseless publishers, others maimed in their most important members, and here and there a picked word turned from the ranks to give place to some palsied, halfdefunct expression, that can scarcely pull trigger in the service for which it was recruited. And why, forsooth? Not because there was any objection to the men themselves, but merely to bring the regiment on a level with the beggarly trainbands of the day. One whole scene, which, if there be any well-written passages in the work, ranked certainly among the best whether in point of style or of invention, has been omitted at the conclusion of the 24th chap. of BK. II.-thereby not only marring that conclusion, but rendering a line in the beginning of the next chapter (sc. "No doubt of it, Mr. Spits,") a mere flat. And yet, upon my honour as a man and a gentleman, there was nothing in this, nor in the other expunged or altered passages, but what I would read to a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, had I such connexions, without a moment's hesitation. Surely "The times are out of joint;" and would to God that some more skilful operator would I suppose had I used the root of the objectionable word, and written "or with as lavish a lap as a trulla bestows her favours," or, making a name of it, in imitation of Butler, "as Trulla bestows her favours," no one would find fault; because, in the former case, without speaking of the advantage gained by the additional purity of the English, none but a blue would understand it—and it makes no matter what a blue reads, and, in the latter case, neither blues, nor any other class of coloured females, would be aware of its meaning, and little Misses who are fond of reading of high-life would mistake it for the name of some court lady of distinction.- -I would be the last man to recommend the introduction of obsceneness or actual vulgarity into writing; but I do protest against this frittering down the masculine energy of a language merely from an over nice respect for the delicacy of the other sex. At this rate, literature bids fair to become ere long of very doubtful gender. In the name of Folly, if the hour must indeed come, let it come at once ! Burn all the mighty masters that have taught the world till the commencement of the present century! drag Literature from his attic story, pull off his breeches, slip a petticoat on his emasculated limbs, seat him in a rocking-chair in a drawing-room, and, with some impassioned poet for his scribe, let him dictate with squeaking voice mellifluous fairy-thoughted mottoes for sugar-plum wrappers! For my own part, I do not write to please the other sex. Stay! do not mistake me; in making this assertion, my reference is not confined to the passages you suppose-for, were every scene of humour cut from the book I would still assert the same; I speak merely in the character which I see you are determined to give me, that of a novelist. No young, unmarried woman, ought attempt restoring them to their proper powers! But, if none else will undertake the task, I must turn bone-setter myself, supplying the place of skill by the ho nesty of my intention, and the zeal of my endeavours. to be permitted to read a novel of any description. Had I a daughter with a heart of ice, and a face as grim as the lion's head on an antique knocker, she should never pore upon a tale of love to make that ice smoke or induce her to believe that her face was as good as her neighbour's. Nature teaches us to sigh soon enough in all conscience, without our needing the bellows of imagination to inflate the lungs prematurely. I repeat, I do not write to please the other sex ; but, as the other sex will read my Life," because they fancy it to be a novel, I recommend to the younger portion to peruse the very chap. ters most parents would bid them omit, and warn them against those which most parents would select. The latter (such for instance as are contained in the Third and Sixth Books,) may inflame the mind; but the former will leave it as quiet as before,-for when the breath escapes in laughter the coals of the imagination have no chance to kindle. As to any indelicacy of language in such scenes 66 We will not return to that subject; it is absurd to speak of it. But let no man cry out against me, that I would trample down the refinement of the day, and restore the growth of those impurities which are now hap. pily rooted out from the fair fields of literature. If he love the taste of thistles, let him turn his tail upon the vigorous, wholesome plants he thinks impure, and browse on; I feed not asses. My Lords (-Common-Sense and Good-Taste-) I have finished my defence. Let me not hang upon your judg. ments; but decide at once.- And to the many friends of Refinement that I see around me, and who, from igno. rance of your lordships' characters and office, may grumble at a just decision, permit me thus to say:-I am ready with the foremost to promote the cause of any real good. Prove to me that society is one whit the better, is not the worse, for such nicety as you affect, and I will gladly speak of a pregnant woman as a lady of tumid deportment, and call the operation of an emetic a sublimation of the gastric contents. Interea inter mulieres, Quæ ibi aderant, forte unam adspicio adolescentulam, TER.-Andria But, O! Argaleon follows her!-So Night Marriage A-la-mode If the Reader be familiar with romances, he will look for no more love adventures in this Life of Sixty Years. He will hardly suppose that, after the desolation which had fallen on my feelings, (as recorded in the preceding Book,) my heart could ever again become devoted to the power it had so fatally worshipped: but, though the hurricane had swept before its violence the fires of the sacri. fice, the altar stood unbroken, and the flame was destined yet to be renewed,-though not indeed to burn with equal brightness. It is an absurd notion that we can love truly but once; as well might we say that a man can never have but one friend. As long as the same material remains, and the same causes to work upon it, the same result must be produced. While the streams of passion continue to flow with equal current, the soil they irrigate will still bring forth its flowers and its fruits; and though the tempest for a time may swell its waters that they rise above their |