The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the foregoing poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's reign. |Reader!| _walk up at once (it will soon be too late) and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate_ A FABLE FOR CRITICS: OR, BETTER, (_I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike, an old-fashioned title-page, such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents_) A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES (_Mrs. Malaprop's word_) FROM _THE TUB OF DIOGENES;_ A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, THAT IS, A SERIES OF JOKES |By A Wonderful Quiz|, _who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace, on the top of the tub_. |Set forth in October, the 31st day, In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway.| It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks |To the Reader|; This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I consulted them when it could make no confusion. For, (though in the gentlest of ways,) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it. I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned,--digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand,--and dawdlings to suit every whimsy's demand, (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree,)--it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh, and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.