_Apropos_ of the subject of Press-toadyism, _in re_ my friend Andrew, I must not forget here to chronicle my boundless admiration for that elaborate and beautiful witticism once contained in the _Saturday Review_. Criticising Andrew's "Essays in Little," the _Saturday_ said:--"The public may like Little, but they certainly prefer it Lang!" _O mirabile dictu!_ Shade of Joe Miller, retire discomfited! Was ever heard the like? What are the quips and cranks of a Yorick compared to this? Poor and feeble are the epigrammatic sentences of Molière; miserable to the verge of bathos every "happy thought" beside this sparkling production of the _Saturday_; this scintillating firework of atticism, launched with so much delicacy! Let me wipe my fevered brow, moist with the dews of ecstasy; I had always hoped the _Saturday_ might one day be witty, but I never thought to see the fond anticipation realised. "Moribund," quotha? Never was the Jumbo of Reviews so frisky or so full of life before! Glorious old _Saturday Slasher_! As our American cousins say, "_Lang_ may you wave!" Whoever perpetrated that delicious conceit on Andrew--Andrew, the very Pythias of my Damon worship--let him look me up at the Savile Club, and if I am there when he chances to call, he shall have such wine and welcome as can only be offered by a Critic with cash to a Critic of humour! XVIII. EULOGISETH ANDREW. In speaking of Andrew I wish it to be very distinctly understood that there is only one Andrew; and he is "the" Andrew as pronouncedly and positively as "the" Mactavish or "the" Mackintosh. He is, to use the words of the old Scottish song, "Lang, Lang, Lang a'comin'," always "a'comin'" it in every English printed journal and newspaper under the sun. His finger is in every literary pie. His shrill piping utterance is even as the voice of Delphic oracles, pronouncing judgment on all men and all things. He is the Author's Own Patent Incubator. His artificial warmth hatches all sorts of small literary fledglings who might otherwise have perished in the shell; and out they come chirping, all fuss and feathers, with as much good stamina as though they had been nursed into being under the wings of that despised old hen, Art. Andrew is better than Art, because he is the imitation of Art, and he comes cheaper than the real article. The way in which the old hen hatches her chicks is slow and infinitely laborious; the Lang Patent Incubator does the work in half the time and ever so much less worry. If you can only manage to place a literary egg close enough to the Incubator for him to "take notice" as it were, why there you are; out comes a chuckling author immediately and begins to pick his food from the paragraph-men with quite an appetite. He is quite a curious and wonderful institution in literature, is my dear Andrew. The pensters have had all sorts of things "occur" to them in their profession, such as "booms," "blackmail," "puffs," "burkings,"