But, oh! this glory of frail Nature's dead, As I shall be that write, and you that read.[142] Once, to be out of fashion, I'll conclude With something that may tend to public good; I wish that piety, for which in heaven The fair is placed--to the lawn sleeves were given: Her justice--to the knot of men, whose care From the raised millions is to take their share. W.C. The book claimed all the praise the finest genius could bestow on it. But let us hear the editor.--He tells us, that "It is a vast disadvantage to authors to publish their _private undigested thoughts_, and _first notions hastily set down_, and designed only as materials for a future structure." And he adds, "That the work may not come short of that great and just expectation which the world had of her whilst she was alive, and still has of everything that is the genuine product of her pen, they must be told that this _was written for the most part in haste_, were her _first conceptions_ and overflowings of her luxuriant fancy, noted with _her pencil at spare hours_, or _as she was dressing_, as her Πἁρεργον only; and _set down just as they came into her mind_." All this will serve as a memorable example of the cant and mendacity of an editor! and that total absence of critical judgment that could assert such matured reflection, in so exquisite a style, could ever have been "first conceptions, just as they came into the mind of Lady Gethin, as she was dressing." The truth is, that Lady Gethin may have had little concern in all these "Reliquiæ Gethinianæ." They indeed might well have delighted their readers; but those who had read Lord Bacon's Essays, and other writers, such as Owen Feltham and Osborne, from whom these relics are chiefly extracted, might have wondered that Bacon should have been so little known to the families of the Nortons and the Gethins, to whom her ladyship was allied; to Congreve and to the editor; and still more particularly to subsequent compilers, as Ballard in his Memoirs, and lately the Rev. Mark Noble in his Continuation of Granger; who both, with all the innocence of Criticism, give specimens of these "Relics," without a suspicion that they were transcribing literally from Lord Bacon's Essays! Unquestionably Lady Gethin herself intended no imposture; her mind had all the delicacy of her sex; she noted much from the books she seems most to have delighted in; and nothing less than the most undiscerning friends could have imagined that everything written by the hand of this young lady was her "first conceptions;" and _apologise_ for some of the finest thoughts, in the most vigorous style which the English language can produce. It seems, however, to prove that Lord Bacon's Essays were not much read at the time this volume appeared.