MY DEAR CHRISTOPHER, Excuse me for addressing you by so endearing a term, as I have had neither the pleasure nor the displeasure of being ever acquainted with you; but as I understand that you intend putting down all the literary ideots in Athens and Babel, by which cities I suppose you mean London and Westminster, and as I have formed an intention of doing the same myself, surely you and I should be dear to each other, engaged as we are in the same cause. Pope, it is true, put down all the scribblers of his age single-handed, but would he have done so had you or I been alive at the time to become their advocates, and prove that he himself was a mere rhymer, a creature who had "learned to crawl upon poetic feet," and merely fit to write such doggrel as "Number a hundred," prefixed to the last number of your Magazine. But, pardon me, my dear fellow, I forgot that this doggrel was written by yourself. But let this pass-Homer himself has nodded, and you who write such an enormous mass of matter every month, must surely write some portion of it half asleep. Besides the high bumpers, which it appears you were gulping at the moment, have a most somniferous effect. But to the point. You have determined to crush all the literary ideots in London and Westminster, for thus I interpret your meaning, and I have determined to do the same. Now we must either go hand in hand or oppose each other; for though my motto is not, Aut Cæsar aut nullus, though I can endure an equal on the throne, I cannot endure a superior. If, therefore, you will not admit me as a partner in the great work of literary purgation and reformation, I am determined, like Pope, to act single-handed, and prove that you belong to the very race of scribblers which you intend to extinguish.

But taking it for granted that you

are too wise or too cautious to refuse

acceding to the friendly offer which I now make to you, I feel it necessary to ascertain the principles by which you intend to be guided in this grand affair, for unless you and I agree upon principles of a fixed and definite character, we shall be eternally at loggerheads, and instead of proving others to be dunces, our want of harmony may prove us dunces ourselves.) At least the world may laugh at us for uniting in a design where one of us is eternally overturning the superstructure which the other has laid. A divided house cannot stand, and if it fall, we may be both buried under the ruins. I shall, therefore, propose to you what I consider most likely to promote the interests of literatures, and the extinction of that brood of scribblers, who infest the literary world, and who, while they corrupt good taste and good morals, create in their stead that intellectual anarchy which now extends the empire of dullness to vast and fearful limits. There are now, as there ever have been, three distinct species of writers, The first have instruction only for their object; the second, according to the precept of Horace, love to mingle instruction with delight-and the third, incapable of imparting any species of instruction or knowledge that ranks above truisms or common place observations, or, in other words, any thing that is worth the ink with which it is printed, seek merely to make you laugh at their namby-pamby, clap-trap, buffoonery and literary swaggering. To the first of these classes belong all writers on science and the useful arts. To this class of writers we owe not only the progress of science, but that refined and mental luxury, that otium cum dignitate, which the useful arts have introduced into social and domestic life. These writers cannot do harm, while they are certain of doing much good. They cannot vitiate public taste, like

the two latter classes, because their writings, inventions, and discoveries, are addressed to the understanding, reasoning, and perceptive faculties alone; neither can they pervert the understanding, because whatever powers, energies, abstractions, or combinations of ideas they may be obliged to exercise, before they can produce any contemplated effect, through the agency of art, or the instrumentality of the laws of nature; we know instantly, when we see the effect produced, whether it be just as they describe it to be, or not, because in these cases, we are always guided by the testimony of the senses, which can no more deceive the savage than the philosopher. There is no reasoning on matters of fact, so that neither he who has produced the fact, can convince us, by any power of reasoning, that he has not produced it, nor can he who has not produced it, persuade us that he has. We have no interest in deceiving ourselves in matters of science and experimental discoveries; and even if we had, the testimony of our senses is too powerful for the doubts and hesitations of sc pticism. We must believe, whether we will or will not. This class of writers, then, is always harmless, to say the worst that can be said of them; for they cannot, like poets and orators, obtain a usurped reputation: they cannot convince the world that they have discovered what they have not discovered, nor produced what they have not produced. Neither can they vitiate public taste, either in writing or in the arts, for in neither are they looked upon as models, nor do they affect it. With this class of writers, then, we have nothing to do, as the interests of literature have nothing to fear from them. If they don't do good, they cannot possibly do barm. It is true that the same cause which prevents them from vitiating public taste, prevents them also from improving it. This is reserved for the second and third classes alone.

The second class, as I have observed, seek to mingle pleasure with instruction, and so far they are all engaged in a laudable object, for instruction, devoid of pleasure, cannot properly be called instruction, as the object of instruction itself is to create

us.

and promote our social happiness and mental delight. But how is this pleasure communicated? It is in the resolution of this question that the great secret of writing consists. Things are sometimes pleasing in their own nature, sometimes from the manner, in which they are presented to Where the things described are extremely pleasing in themselves, the only art required is to paint them simply as they are, without addition or subtraction. Beauty, when unadorned is adorned the most. Who can improve the Apollo of Belvidere, or the Venus de Medicis, by giving them a new attitude or a new expression? Who would not diminish their effect by removing any ideal blemish which his imagination may discover in them? What is then already beautiful, requires neither the clothing of art, nor the imagery of fancy, to give it new charms; it is only where we describe objects that are not perfectly beautiful in themselves, or where the beauty is veiled by some accidental disguise, that we are obliged to have recourse to the aid of art, in order to remove the disguise, or in the former case to steal from some other portion of nature— from some beings of kindred mould, but of more beautiful form or delicate hue, that grace or attraction which gives the object we would paint, all the elegance and simplicity which had been denied to it by nature. Hence it is, that the dulce, the pleasure, imparted by writers, consists sometimes in the simple idea or conception, and sometimes in the mode or manner of describing it; so that elegance of style, whatever some John Bull writers, who look to the substance and not to the dress, may think to the contrary, is as essentially necessary to produce that pleasure, that dulce which Horace prized not less than the utile, as beauty of conception or sublimity of idea. Indeed beauty of conception will always lead to beauty of expression, though there are instances of writers, whose style and sentiments do not appear in perfect harmony with each other.

I should not detain you so long, Kit, on the subject of grace, elegance, and beauty, if I really imagined that you were yourself the author of number one hundred, for I know how irksome all refined subjects are to dog.

grel writers. They are always sick of good company; but whether you are weary of me or not, I will dismiss this second class of writers by saying, that while they succeed in producing that pleasure and instruction which they seek to produce, they are, in my opinion, not only a legitimate class of writers, but the most agreeable companions which we meet with in our wanderings through the moral and intellectual world. They are not, therefore, proper game for us: let us turn to the third class, and we shall find that they are the hornets who consume the honey without collecting the sweets, and who consequently ought to be all laid prostrate long before the destroying angel of number two hundred, brandishes his flaming sabre over their devoted heads.

This class, as I have already observed, seek merely to make you laugh at their clap-traps, and buffoonery. The pleasure they impart is not the handmaid of instruction, and consequently they please only the canaille, who throw instruction to the dogs. Hence, like the butterfly, they are only beings of a day. Their gaudy colours attract for a moment, and the next moment they are cast aside, and generally perish in the fall. But even while their novelty gives them a factitious interest and importance, they are pleasing only to children and fools. The delicate eye of taste can never rest upon their productions, and it views them with averted glance, or philosophic pity. But these gentle men are not to be mortified by contempt. No, no, they are better versed in the tactics of literary warfare and literary cunning. They have always the laugh on their own side, They attempt to say something clever, and imagining they have succeeded; they stare at you like the clown, with a foolish face, if not of praise, at least of laudatory expectation. They laugh at their very attempt at excellence, and expect you will laugh also to keep them in countenance.

This is the utmost height of their ambition. If you laugh they know you are pleased; and if you are pleased, they are satisfied, because they have performed their task. This was all they aimed

at.

They imagine that every man that laughs is naturally pleased, with

out reflecting that there are different modes and species of pleasure, and that the man who laughs at their folly to-day, will turn from it to-morrow with disgust; whilst he always returns to the refined pleasures of taste and fancy with renewed delight, Your money is all they want, and they have philosophy enough, or cunning enough, to know that no man but a fool pa ts with his money without some equivalent. Accordingly, feeling their own inability to make you more wise, or more learned than you are already, or rather afraid of exposing their own absurdity by making the attempt, the only equivalent they can give you for your two and sixpence, or three and sixpence, is that of making you laugh at their own absurdity, literary capers, and high-sounding pretensions. Is not this a truth, Kit, which you know by experience? Do you not know that more than half the world are fo ls, and derive more pleasure from laughing at each others' folly, than from imbibing the wisdom of Solomon, or the philosophy of Socrates.

Tous les hommes sont faus Et malore tout leur soin, Il pe different entre eux, Que du plus ou du moins. Now, my dear Kit, is it to be endured that these literary jack puddings, who live solely by exposing their own folly, should succeed better than you or I, who look down from the proud eminence to which we have exalted ourselves, not only by those stores of acquired and treasured knowledge,which have been so industriously collected, and so prudently dispensed, but also by the bold, restless, and daring energies of our native genius, a genius that moulded into grace and elegance those rough masses of shapeless, crude, and unmodified knowledge which we had so laboriously and tardily collected from the rust and dregs of antiquity. We only look to the praise and esteem of those whose esteem is worthy our ambition, but they seek the applause of the canaille. They are willing to be looked upon as fools, pro vided they gain more by their folly than we do by our wisdom. Now this is the brood of scribblers which I intend to extinguish; not because they are the most stupid of the lite rary tribe, but because they are the

most impudent, and you know better than I do the irresistible and magic effect of impudence. Demosthenes was aware of its power, and Bacon attributes to its potent spell all the triumphs of oratory. All pretenders to literature, and to that species of knowledge which is just placed beyond the ken of vulgar apprehension, are perfectly harmless, however ignorant, unless these pretensions be supported by their impudence and buffoonery. The reason is very obvious: the greater portion of mankind are naturally ignorant, at least the fancied perfectability of human reason is yet a mere speculative hypothesis, for the radiance of science and of universal knowledge sends forth as yet no dawning rays, no auspicious and welcome harbingers of its dazzling, cloud compelling, and irradiating influence. As the great bulk of mankind are therefore ignorant, partly from native indolence and mental imbecility, partly from the sources of, and avenues to, knowledge being placed beyond their reach, and partly from their avocations in life requiring an exclusive appropriation of their time and labour, we are not to be surprised that they are more liable to attend to those literary quacks, who are placed just one degree above themselves, and who, from a knowledge of their credulity, know they believe every thing that is dogmatically and unhesitatingly stated, without ever enquiring into the grounds of their belief, than to writers who forget their existence altogether, and address themselves solely to minds of a higher and sublimer order. It is then our duty, as well as our interest, to extirpate this brood of literary heretics from the face of the earth, for you know well that dulness will preserve her ancient right while they are suffered to exist; and what is worse, Kit, you and I must slumber in the shade, while they are permitted to vitiate public taste and public morals; for you know we have too much genius to write nonsense, and too much greatness of soul and stubbornness of principle to prostrate those higher faculties with which providence aut melior natura has endowed us before the reptile taste of congregated dulness,-before those to whom our sublimer and diviner mu

sings will appear the frenzied ebullitions of insanity. It is then only by extirpating this class of writers that we can ever hope to gain the ear of the public. By the public I mean the majority of readers, for all men are now-a-days readers of books, however ignorant of their contents. These readers must naturally turn over to us the moment their present favourites are extinguished; and the consequence will be, that they must either learn good sense, good taste, good manners, and good morals, or lay down their books, and rest content with their native ignorance. Now this will be as it ought to be, for it is much safer to study from the book of nature, than from the crazy productions of those scribblers whom we purpose to extinguish. But here I should apologize for using the plural pronoun we, for as yet I am ignorant of the class of writers who are to fall victims to the lightnings of your fulminating wrath. I merely suppose them to be the class whom I have just described, for against what other class could my worthy friend turn his potent arms. It is true, indeed, that I should not hesitate to rank you with this doomed and devoted tribe of scribblers, were I to judge of you by the character of the magazine which you conduct; but as you tell us yourself that no person has ever doubted your literary prowess, or your ability to strangle all literary pretenders, I can easily perceive that having once secured immortality by your writings, you now take your rest, and leave the conduct of your magazine to undisciplined and uninitiated understrappers, who travel in the same road to fame with the scribblers whom I have just described. Let me tell you, however, that highly as I value your aid, and redoubtable as I esteem you, no partnership shall ever be formed between you and me, unless you discharge those miscreants, and evince your zeal for the extirpation of dunces and the reformation of literature by putting your own shoulders to the wheel. I really think, Kit, that so far from attending to the editorship of your magazine, you do not even read it after it is published. It is, in real truth, as stupid, as laboured, and as farcical as the New Monthly. You know,