CHAPTER XVI--ON LITERARY SNOBS

What will he say about Literary Snobs? has been a question, I make no
doubt, often asked by the public. How can he let off his own profession?
Will that truculent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility, the
clergy, the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately, hesitate when the
turn comes to EGORGER his own flesh and blood?

My dear and excellent querist, whom does the schoolmaster flog so
resolutely as his own son? Didn't Brutus chop his offspring's head off?
You have a very bad opinion indeed of the present state of literature
and of literary men, if you fancy that any one of us would hesitate to
stick a knife into his neighbour penman, if the latter's death could do
the State any service.

But the fact is, that in the literary profession THERE ARE NO SNOBS.
Look round at the whole body of British men of letters; and I defy you
to point out among them a single instance of vulgarity, or envy, or
assumption.

Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all modest in
their demeanour, elegant in their manners, spotless in their lives, and
honourable in their conduct to the world and to each other. You MAY,
occasionally, it is true, hear one literary man abusing his brother; but
why? Not in the least out of malice; not at all from envy; merely from a
sense of truth and public duty. Suppose, for instance, I, good-naturedly
point out a blemish in my friend MR. PUNCH'S person, and say, MR. P. has
a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more crooked than those features