Bayes) has strenuously advised that the belly
should be empty when the brain is to be unloaded. How can a gentleman's
gentleman, with a _corpus_ that banishes his backbone nearly four
feet from the table at which he sits, betake himself to his cogitations
over a tankard of October, and expect to beat your true thin
garret-haunting devil, with an inside like a pea-shooter, who can
scarcely be said to be one remove from the ethereal, and who writes from
that best of inspirations--an empty pantry? We shall presently see
whether an author from below is better than one from above--whether it
will be more eligible that the Muses should have several more stories
to descend, when their nine ladyships are invoked so to do--and that the
pen should be taken out of the scraggy hand of a gentleman in rags, and
be placed in the plump gripe of a gentleman in tags.
Before we proceed to give an account of the book before us, we must yet
take leave to indulge in a few reflections on the effect of this mental
explosion in the noddles of John and James and Richard, upon reviewers,
publishers, and the world in general.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58