relief from the tediousness of ordinary novels, wherein the author, like the bear-leader of a menagerie or showman of waxwork, officiously interposes his trite reflexions, informing you when you are to be glad, when sorry, when shocked,-in the Shandean amalgamation of creator and created animating my kill-care and devil-may-care pages!—

Charles Lamb records that a certain schoolmaster kindly offered to instruct him in the technicalities of essay-writing, in order to redeem his chef-d'œuvres from their discursive irregularity. Your Athenæums, Atlases, New Monthlies, and Co. would tender the same counsels to Montaigne,-Rabelais,-Sterne,-CECIL !-These Dr. Dilworths of the literary go-cart,—these monthly nurses of infant romance, cannot so much as conjecture the existence of A STYLE ;-and when they find the untrammelled Public laughing till it cries again over some ex-professional book, the European popularity of which is their first intimation

of its existence, their insignificance has only to put on its sourest face, and wonder what the block heads can find to amuse them in trash so wretched !—

To You, dear Public, I admitted from the first that I was not a literary man ;-and readily will you conjecture my irritation when, precipitated into the horde of these barbarians, I found them sniffing inquisitively and threateningly about me, like the wild horses round the fiery courser of Mazeppa!-My solace, however, was in you, my hope in you;—and nobly have you redeemed my confidence.Your cordial recognition of the artist-like progression of my flighty Coxcomb into the coxcombical twaddler, has proved your genius to be secondary only to my own.

Shakspeare, it has been often said, was forced to kill Mercutio early in the play, lest Mercutio should kill him, such overstrained vivacity becoming tedious in the end; and for my own part, I have always felt that the con

versation-men invited to enliven a dinner party, ought to be turned out of the room after the first course; unless, like CECIL, wise enough to subside by degrees into common-sensicality. You, dear Public, are of my opinion.—Instead of rashly rating "CECIL, A PEER," with "Paradise Regained," you were prompt to recognize "Wallenstein's Death" as only the finer continuation of "Wallenstein's Camp."

It has been asserted, that popular favour, like water, cannot ascend to the lofty eminence of genius, a vulgar level being necessary to establish its permanence. I deny it!-Have you not adopted me as readily as the Parisians naturalized Figaro? Do you not adore me as a veiled Isis, and believe in me, as in the Veiled Prophet?-Have you not, for the last twelve months, been writing me letters marked

private and confidential"?-inviting me to dinner, offering me a clerkship of the Customs, and the hand of your daughter ?—nay, have I not reason to suppose you have remem

bered me in your will?-What, my beloved Public, could you do more? - You have laughed with me in my sleeve,-wept with me into my cambric handkerchief.-Like Titania enamoured of Nicholas Bottom, you have caressed my long ears, and borne with my materialism, when, instead of fairy favours or crowns of laurel, I have insisted upon bottle of good sweet hay!"

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In return, what, what have I to offer ?—Only my services to assist you in rending asunder like smoking flax, the bonds of literary subservience! I address you over the heads of the noisy, vulgar critics, as some great tragedian addresses the potent pit over the heads of scraping fiddlers and empty kettle-drums, to promise you, oh! faithful and affectionate Public, that you shall have books after your own heart, not after the hearts of the reviewers, who have no heart.-I promise you pictures of society painted from the life,-not from former pictures of society. It was observed by

Colman of John Kemble, that, if sewed into a skin to act a pig in a pantomime, he would act a pig with six legs better than a pig with four. My pigs shall be all quadrupeds.-My Graces shall not, like those of Mr. N. P. Willis, be "distinguishable by the blue riband of a Duke;"-neither shall my Ladyships prattle like the Lady Froths of the seventeenth century, to propitiate the Athenæum, which decided "Cecil" to be no gentleman, because not modelled after the herces of Farquhar, the only coxcombs of its acquaintance.

And now, trusty and well-beloved Public, farewell.-Vale et me ama!-Long may you live to delight in my works,-long live my works to delight you ;-or, in other words, and the phrase of the worthy Mirza,—may you live a thousand years!-Once more, farewell!—

N. or M.