the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all admirers,
met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and
Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary union
of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as they chose to
associate with them?

The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses
this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the
knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his
popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary metropolis; if a town has
not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it
is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live
in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of
varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and,
by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title
M.S.M.A. than of all their other honors put together.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "facts." They
are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows
that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them
into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every
ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I
allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome
and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe
while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves
of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these
crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech?

[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind.