don’t you richly deserve it? Haven’t you been for years past bullying and insulting everybody whom you deemed weak, and currying favour with everybody whom ye thought strong? ‘We approve of this. We disapprove of that. Oh, this will never do. These are fine lines!’ The lines perhaps some horrid sycophantic rubbish addressed to Wellington, or Lord So-and-so. To have your ignorance thus exposed, to be shown up in this manner, and by whom? A gypsy! Ay, a gypsy was the very right person to do it. But is it not galling after all?
Ah, but we don’t understand Armenian, it cannot be expected that we should understand Armenian, or Welsh, or— Hey, what’s this? The mighty we not understand Armenian, or Welsh, or— Then why does the mighty we pretend to review a book like ‘Lavengro’? From the arrogance with which it continually delivers itself, one would think that the mighty we is omniscient; that it understands every language; is versed in every literature; yet the mighty we does not even know the word for bread in Armenian. It knows bread well enough by name in English, and frequently bread in England only by its name, but the truth is, that the mighty we, with all its pretension, is in general a very sorry creature, who, instead of saying nous disons, should rather say nous dis: Porny in his ‘Guerre des Dieux,’ very profanely makes the three in one say, Je faisons; now, Lavengro, who is anything but profane, would suggest that critics, especially magazine and Sunday newspaper critics, should commence with nous dis, as the first word would be significant of the conceit and assumption of the critic, and the second of the extent of the critic’s information. The we says its say, but when fawning sycophancy or vulgar abuse are taken from that say, what remains? Why a blank, a void like Ginnungagap.
As the writer, of his own accord, has exposed some of the blemishes of his book—a task, which a competent critic ought to have done—he will now point out two or three of its merits, which any critic, not altogether blinded with ignorance, might have done, or not replete with gall and envy would have been glad to do. The book has the merit of communicating a fact connected with physiology, which in all the pages of the multitude of books was never previously mentioned—the mysterious practice of touching objects to baffle the evil chance. The miserable detractor will, of course, instantly begin to rave about such a habit being common—well and good; but was it ever before described in print, or all connected with it dissected? He may then vociferate something about Johnson having touched—the writer cares not whether Johnson—who, by the by, during the last twenty or thirty years, owing to people having become ultra Tory mad from reading Scott’s novels and the Quarterly Review, has been a mighty favourite, especially
with some who were in the habit of calling him a half-crazy old fool—touched, or whether he did not; but he asks where did Johnson ever describe the feelings which induced him to perform the magic touch, even supposing that he did perform it? Again, the history gives an account of a certain book called the ‘Sleeping Bard,’ the most remarkable prose work of the most difficult language but one, of modern Europe; a book, for a notice of which, he believes, one might turn over in vain the pages of any review printed in England, or, indeed, elsewhere. So here are two facts, one literary and the other physiological, for which any candid critic was bound to thank the author, even as in ‘The Romany Rye’ there is a fact connected with Iro Norman Myth, for the disclosing of which any person who pretends to have a regard for literature is bound to thank him, namely, that the mysterious Finn or Fingal of ‘Ossian’s Poems’ is one and the same person as the Sigurd Fofnisbane of the Edda and the Wilkina, and the Siegfried Horn of the Lay of the Niebelungs.
The writer might here conclude, and, he believes, most triumphantly; as, however, he is in the cue for writing, which he seldom is, he will for his own gratification, and for the sake of others, dropping metaphors about vipers and serpents, show up in particular two or three sets or cliques of people, who, he is happy to say, have been particularly virulent against him and his work, for nothing indeed could have given him greater mortification than their praise.
In the first place, he wishes to dispose of certain individuals who call themselves men of wit and fashion—about town—who he is told have abused his book ‘vaustly’—their own word. These people paint their cheeks, wear white kid gloves, and dabble in literature, or what they conceive to be literature. For abuse from such people, the writer was prepared. Does anyone imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure the insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He has been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the horse; now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the latter carries about with him that which the envious hermaphrodite does not possess.
They consider, forsooth, that his book is low—but he is not going to waste words about them—one or two of whom, he is told, have written very duncie books about Spain, and are highly enraged with him, because certain books which he wrote about Spain were not considered duncie. No, he is not going to waste words upon them, for verily he dislikes their company, and so he’ll pass them by, and proceed to others.
The Scotch Charlie o’er the water people have been very loud in the abuse of ‘Lavengro’—this again might be expected; the sarcasms of the Priest about the Charlie o’er the water nonsense of course stung them. Oh! it is one of the claims which ‘Lavengro’ has to respect, that it is the first, if not the only work, in which that nonsense is, to a certain extent, exposed. Two or three of their remarks on passages of ‘Lavengro’ he will reproduce and laugh at. Of course your Charlie o’er the water people are genteel exceedingly, and cannot abide anything low. Gypsyism they think is particularly low, and the use of gypsy words in literature beneath its gentility; so they object to gypsy words being used in ‘Lavengro’ where gypsies are introduced speaking. ‘What is Romany forsooth?’ say they. Very good! And what is Scotch? Has not the public been nauseated with Scotch for the last thirty years? ‘Ay, but Scotch is not—’ The writer believes he knows much better than the Scotch what Scotch is, and what it is not; he has told them before what it is, a very sorry jargon. He will now tell them what it’s not—a sister or an immediate daughter of the Sanscrit, which Romany is. ‘Ay, but the Scotch are’—foxes, foxes, nothing else than foxes, even like the gypsies—the difference between the gypsy and Scotch fox being that the first is wild, with a mighty brush, the other a sneak, with a gilt collar and without a tail.
A Charlie o’er the water person attempts to be witty because the writer has said that perhaps a certain old Edinburgh high-school porter, of the name of Boee, was perhaps of the same blood as a certain Bui, a Northern Kemp, who distinguished himself at the battle of Horinger Bay. A pretty matter, forsooth, to excite the ridicule of a Scotchman! Why, is there a beggar or trumpery fellow in Scotland who does not pretend to be somebody, or related to somebody? Is not every Scotchman descended from some king, kemp, or cow-stealer of old, by his own account at least? Why, the writer would even go so far as to bet a trifle that the poor creature who ridicules Boee’s supposed ancestry has one of his own, at least, as grand and as apocryphal as old Boee’s of the high school.
The same Charlie o’er the water person is mightily indignant that Lavengro should have spoken disrespectfully of William Wallace; Lavengro, when he speaks of that personage, being a child of about ten years old, and repeating merely what he had heard. All the Scotch, by-the-by, for a great many years past, have been great admirers of William Wallace, particularly the Charlie o’er the water people, who in their nonsense-verses about Charlie generally contrive to bring in the name of William, Willie, or Wullie Wallace. The writer begs leave to say that he by no means wishes to bear hard against William Wallace, but he cannot help asking why, if William, Willie, or Wullie