No, a new suit of clothes would not render Spenser more attractive, not even if to a coat and waistcoat of Stultz's fabric, white satin pantaloons were added, such as the handsomest and best dressed of modern patriots, novelists and poets was known by on the public walk of a fashionable watering place.
Save us from the Ultradelicates and the Extrasuperfines! for if these are to prevail—
What can it avail
To drive forth a snail
Or to make a sail
Of a herring's tail?
To rhyme or to rail,
To write or to indite
Either for delight
Or else for despite?
Or books to compile
Of divers manner of style,
Vice to revile,
And sin to exile,
To teach or to preach
As reason will reach?
So said Skelton three centuries ago, and for myself I say once more what Skelton would have been well pleased to have heard said by any one.
Aballiboozo!
Dear Author, says one of those Readers who deserve to be pleased, and whom therefore there is a pleasure in pleasing, dear Author! may I not ask wherefore you have twice in this Chapter Extraordinary given us part of your long mysterious word, and only part, instead of setting it before us at full length?
Dear Reader! you may; and you may also ask unblamed whether a part of the word is not as good, that is to say as significant, as the whole? You shall have a full and satisfactory answer in the next Chapter.
CHAPTER CXLVIII.
WHEREIN A SUBSTITUTE FOR OATHS, AND OTHER PASSIONATE INTERJECTIONS IS EXEMPLIFIED.