“Lecteur, mon ami, I have given you the advantage of a motto from Sophocles, and were it as apposite to me, as it seems applicable when coming from you, I might content myself with replying to it in a couplet of the honest old wine-bibbing, Water-poet:—
That man may well be called an idle mome
That mocks the Cock because he wears a comb.
But no one who knows a hawk from a hernshaw, or a sheep's head from a carrot, or the Lord Chancellor Brougham in his wig and robes, from a Guy Vaux on the fifth of November, can be so mistaken in judgment as to say that I make use of many words in making nothing understood; nor as to think me,
ἄνθρωπον ἀγριοποἰον, αὐθαδόστομον,
ἔχοντ᾽ ἀχαλινον, ἀκρατὲς, ἀπύλωτον στόμὰ,
ἀπεριλάλητον, κομποφακελοῤῥήμονα.3
3 ARISTOPHANES.
“Any subject is inexhaustible if it be fully treated of; that is, if it be treated doctrinally and practically, analytically and synthetically, historically and morally, critically, popularly and eloquently, philosophically, exegetically and æsthetically, logically, neologically, etymologically, archaiologically, Daniologically and Doveologically, which is to say, summing up all in one, Doctorologically.
“Now, my good Reader, whether I handle my subject in any of these ways, or in any other legitimate way, this is certain, that I never handle it as a cow does a musquet; and that I have never wandered from it, not even when you have drawn me into a Tattle-de-Moy.”
“Auctor incomparabilis, what is a Tattle-de Moy?”
“Lecteur mon ami, you shall now know what to expect in the next chapter, for I will tell you there what a Tattle-de-Moy is.”