Alexander! Who but an addle-headed sot would have wandered up and down
the lanes, like Morland, chalking out pigs and milkmaids, when he might
have been painting, like Barry, pictures, by the acre, of gods and
goddesses enacting incomprehensible allegories! Let us be respectable, O
my Bobus, and wear good coats and the best hats to be had for money or
upon credit; let us carefully conceal our connection with "The Gotham
Revolver," although the honest people who print it do give us our beer
and mutton; let us write great histories which nobody will read, engage
in tractations to which nobody will listen, build twelve-storied epics
which nobody will publish, and invent Gordian philosophies which nobody
can untie. Surely it is quite time for Minerva to have a general
house-cleaning, to put on a fresh smock, and to live cleanly. Rabelais
shall be washed, and Sterne sad-ironed into gravity; De Foe shall be
made as decorous as a tract; Mandeville shall be reburned, and we will
kindle the fire with half the leaves of this dry and yellow Montaigne.
Nobody shall approach the waters of Castaly save upon stilts; and
whoever may giggle, as he takes his physic, shall be put upon a
dreadfully plentiful allowance of Guieciardini for bread, and of the
poems of ----- ------- for water.

But, alas! Brother Bobus, where to begin our purification, and where to
end it? We may, like the curate in "Don Quixote," reprieve Amadis de
Gaul, but shall we, therefore, make Esplandian, "his lawful-begotten
son," a foundation for the funeral-pile we are to set a-blazing
presently? To be sure, there is sense in the observation of the good and
holy priest upon that memorable occasion. "This," said the barber, "is
Amadis of Greece; and it is my opinion that all those upon this side are
of the same family." "Then pitch them all into the yard," responded
the priest; "for, rather than miss the satisfaction of roasting Queen
Pintiquiniestra and the pastorals of Darinel the Shepherd and his damned