“Perhaps it is a little strong,” he said to himself, with a grim smile, as he reviewed what he had written. “I feel a little like Wellington revisiting Waterloo!”
Indeed, from the style of the discourse, one might have supposed that George had published a dozen volumes simultaneously, and that every critic in the civilised world had sprung up and rent him with one accord. “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” was but milk and water, with very little milk, compared with his onslaught. The dead lay in heaps, as it were, in the track of his destroying charge, and he had hanged, drawn and quartered himself several times for his own satisfaction, gibbeting the quarters on every page. In his fury and unquenchable thirst for vengeance, he had quoted whole passages from notices he had written, only to tear them to pieces and make bonfires of their remains.
“I think I had better wait a day or two,” he remarked, as he folded up the manuscript and put it into a drawer of his table.
It is characteristic of the profession and its necessities, that, after having crushed and dismembered all critics, past, present and to come, in the most complete and satisfactory manner, George Wood laid his hand upon the new volumes which he had last brought home and proceeded during several days with the task of reviewing them. Moreover, he did the work much better than usual, taking an odd delight in affecting the attitude of a gentle taster, and in using the very language he most despised, just for the sake of persuading himself that he was right in despising it. The two editors who had given him work to do that week were surprised to find that he had returned with such success to his former style of writing. They were still further surprised when an article entitled “Cheap Criticism” appeared, about six weeks later, in a well known magazine, signed with his name in full. They did not like it all.
George had recast the paper more than once, and at last, when he had regretfully “rinsed all the starch out of it,” as he said to himself, he had taken it to Johnson.
“I did not know that any modern human being could use such violent language without swearing,” said the pale young man, catching a phrase here and there as he ran his eye over the manuscript.
“Do you call that violent?” asked George, delighted to find that he had left his work more forcible than he had supposed. “I wish you could have seen the first copy! This looked like prayer and meditation compared with it.”
“If you pray in that style,” remarked Johnson, “your prayers will be at least heard, if they are not answered. They will attract attention in some quarter, though perhaps not in the right one.”
George’s face fell.
“Do you think it is too red-hot?” he asked. “I have been spreading butter on the public nose so long,” he added, almost apologetically.