While accepting with becoming humility the disparaging estimate of my performance, it is not desirable that a reviewer of this character should have his say uncontradicted, though in setting myself right with those whom his strictures might have influenced, I have perhaps honoured him with too much notice. It is not a very formidable matter to cope with such an adversary.
“While these are censors, ’twould be sin to spare;
While such are critics, why should I forbear?”—Byron.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The sonnets were originally discovered in the Monastery of the “Monks of Therfuse,” which stood on the site now occupied by the terminus of the “Glenmutchkin Railway.” They were afterwards placed for safe custody with the MSS. of Ossian.
[2] “Well-known scholars,” the Quarterly says, “have shown before him, and he is justified in adopting the conclusion, that the name of ‘Saxon’ must have been loosely applied to all the pirates that scoured the Narrow Seas. We may conjecture that many crews from Scania and the Danish Isles, or from the great bay by the Naze of Norway, which gave its name to the Vikings, must have been found among the roving fleets of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Empire was crumbling into ruins.”
[3] “The red-bearded Thor was called ‘The Englishmen’s God.’”—Quarterly Review.
[4] I suspect these were not the savage Americans Pinkerton had in his mind.
[5] A writer who, to denote that which is without foundation, makes use of the expression “mere fudge” cannot be a very competent judge of elegance.