the tongs, when nobody is looking, and make yourself very miserable; or
you buy it, going home in the cab, and, having spoilt your appetite for
dinner with it, tear it up very small, throw it out of window, and
swear you have never seen it.

One forgives the critic--perhaps--but never the good-natured friend. It
is always possible--to the wise man--to refrain from reading the
lucubration of the former, but he cannot avoid the latter: which brings
me to the main subject of this paper--the Critic on the Hearth. One can
be deaf to the voice of the public hireling, but it is impossible to
shut one's ears to the private communications of one's friends and
family--all meant for our good, no doubt, but which are nevertheless
insufferable.

In Miss Martineau's Autobiography there is a passage expressing her
surprise that whereas in all other cases there is a certain modest
reticence in respect to other people's business when it is of a special
kind, the profession of literature is made an exception. As there is no
one but imagines that he can poke a fire and drive a gig, so everyone
believes he can write a book, or at all events (like that blasphemous
person in connection with the Creation) that he can give a wrinkle or
two to the author.

I wonder what a parson would say, if a man who never goes to church
save when his babies are christened, or by accident to get out of a
shower, should volunteer his advice about sermon-making? or an artist,
to whom the man without arms, who is wheeled about in the streets for
coppers, should recommend a greater delicacy of touch? Indeed, metaphor
fails me, and I gasp for mere breath when I think of the astounding
impudence of some people. If I possessed a tithe of it, I should surely