"We will begin with the encouraging tickle: 'Although this work is full of faults,—though the characters are unnatural, the plot utterly improbable, the thoughts hackneyed, and the style ungrammatical,—yet we would by no means discourage the author from proceeding; and in the mean while we confidently recommend his work to the attention of the reading public."
"Take, now, the advising tickle: 'There is a good deal of merit in these little volumes, although we must regret the evident haste in which they were written. The author might do better,—we recommend him a study of the best writers;' then conclude by a Latin quotation, which you may take from one of the mottoes in the 'Spectator.'
"Now, young gentleman, for a specimen of the metaphorical tickle: 'We beg this poetical aspirant to remember the fate of Pyrenaeus, who, attempting to pursue the Muses, forgot that he had not the wings of the goddesses, flung himself from the loftiest ascent he could reach, and perished.'
"This you see, Paul, is a loftier and more erudite sort of tickle, and may be reserved for one of the Quarterly Reviews. Never throw away a simile unnecessarily.
"Now for a sample of the facetious tickle: 'Mr.—-has obtained a considerable reputation! Some fine ladies think him a great philosopher, and he has been praised in our hearing by some Cambridge Fellows for his knowledge of fashionable society.'
"For this sort of tickle we generally use the dullest of our tribe; and I have selected the foregoing example from the criticisms of a distinguished writer in 'The Asinaeum,' whom we call, par excellence, the Ass.
"There is a variety of other tickles,—the familiar, the vulgar, the polite, the good-natured, the bitter; but in general all tickles may be supposed to signify, however disguised, one or other of these meanings: 'This book would be exceedingly good if it were not exceedingly bad;' or, 'this book would be exceedingly bad if it were not exceedingly good.'
"You have now, Paul, a general idea of the superior art required by the tickle?"
Our hero signified his assent by a sort of hysterical sound between a laugh and a groan. MacGrawler continued:—
"There is another grand difficulty attendant on this class of criticism.—it is generally requisite to read a few pages of the work; because we seldom tickle without extracting, and it requires some judgment to make the context agree with the extract. But it is not often necessary to extract when you slash or when you plaster; when you slash, it is better in general to conclude with: 'After what we have said, it is unnecessary to add that we cannot offend the taste of our readers by any quotation from this execrable trash.' And when you plaster, you may wind up with: 'We regret that our limits will not allow us to give any extracts from this wonderful and unrivalled work. We must refer our readers to the book itself.'