Babb’s soap requires a 2 pg. ad;
But never mind; we mean to boom
Your name while ’tis the newest fad.
Who cares a —— for what’s inside
Now you are on the rising tide?
Adam Quince.
A NEW BILL OF THE SOCIETY FOR
PREVENTION OF CRUELTY
TO READERS.
Some of the things our industrious writers of today are doing, rather incline us to regret that the craft has become so exemplary and respectable. It may be that morality is served by the reformation of Grub Street, but industry in literature is rather a fearful thing when unaccompanied by other qualities of mind; and a good many contemporary writers are more industrious than anything else. Indeed, it has occurred to me, though I personally take nothing stronger than tea, that a revival of loose living in the literary world would be a God-send to discriminating readers, as we might then cherish the hope that some of our popular novelists would perish ignominously, like poor Kit Marlowe, before they could put in their cheap, slop literature on the strength of their first bit of genuine work.