"But perhaps it is the literary criticism to which you object. You are an author yourself, perhaps, though we have not the pleasure of recollecting you. You have written a good-sized volume of _Something, and Other Poems_, and cannot bear that your thoughts and rhymes should be scrutinised and found fault with by a reviewer--that your immortal fire should be tested in so earthy a crucible. In that case you will find many more or less distinguished names to sympathise with and encourage you. There is Bulwer, with whom the word critic is an exponent of every thing that is low, and mean, and contemptible; and on our side of the water (sorry are we to say it) a much milder man than Bulwer--Washington Irving--has spoken of the critical tribe as having little real influence, and not deserving more influence than they have; while of the small fry of authorlings, there is no end of those who are ready to rate the reviewer roundly for 'finding fault with his betters.' One cannot even condemn an epic of impracticable length and hopeless mediocrity--nay, not so much as hint that verses are not necessarily poetry--without being assailed by an unceremonious _argumentum ad hominem_--'You couldn't make better.'[49] And perhaps the critic could not. It is more reasonable to suppose that he wouldn't if he could, entertaining the commendable conviction, that to spend a day, much more a month or a year, in writing middling verse, is an awful waste of time. But what an absurd irrelevancy of counter-charge! Suppose Brummell had found fault with the (Nug ee?) or Buckmaster of his day for misfitting him, and the schneider had replied, 'Mr Brummell, you couldn't make as good a coat in a year.' 'Very probably not,' the beau might have retorted; 'but my business is to wear the coat, and yours to make it.' Must a man be able to concoct a _bisque d'écrevisse_ himself, before he can venture to hazard an opinion on the respective merits of the _Trois Frères_ and the _Café Anglais_? Or shall he be denied the right of giving a decided vote and holding a decided opinion in politics, because he has not ability or opportunity to become a cabinet minister to-morrow? In seeking to put down, or affecting to despise criticism, the author makes a claim which no other distinguished character ventures. The artist does not insist on controlling the judgment of his contemporaries,[50] still less the statesman. Did a premier fulminate his dictum to the effect that no journalist had a right to find fault with his measures, he would raise a pretty swarm of hornets about his ears. By what precedent or analogy, then, can the poet, or novelist, or historian, set himself up as autocrat in that realm of letters, which is proverbially a republic?