The writer might here conclude, and, he believes, most
triumphantly; as, however, he is in the cue for writing, which he
seldom is, he will for his own gratification, and for the sake of
others, dropping metaphors about vipers and serpents, show up in
particular two or three sets or cliques of people, who, he is happy
to say, have been particularly virulent against him and his work,
for nothing indeed could have given him greater mortification than
their praise.
In the first place, he wishes to dispose of certain individuals who
call themselves men of wit and fashion--about town--who he is told
have abused his book "vaustly"--their own word. These people paint
their cheeks, wear white kid gloves, and dabble in literature, or
what they conceive to be literature. For abuse from such people,
the writer was prepared. Does any one imagine that the writer was
not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he
gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary
coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure the
insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He
has been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the
horse; now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the
latter carries about with him that which the envious hermaphrodite
does not possess.
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