grandchildren, of those whose acquaintance I made something more than a
whole generation ago. I could depend on a kind welcome from my
contemporaries,--my coevals. But where are those contemporaries? Ay de
mi! as Carlyle used to exclaim,--Ah, dear me! as our old women say,--I
look round for them, and see only their vacant places. The old vine
cannot unwind its tendrils. The branch falls with the decay of its
support, and must cling to the new growths around it, if it would not lie
helpless in the dust. This paper is a new tendril, feeling its way, as
it best may, to whatever it can wind around. The thought of finding here
and there an old friend, and making, it may be, once in a while a new
one, is very grateful to me. The chief drawback to the pleasure is the
feeling that I am submitting to that inevitable exposure which is the
penalty of authorship in every form. A writer must make up his mind to
the possible rough treatment of the critics, who swarm like bacteria
whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed. I have
had as little to complain of as most writers, yet I think it is always
with reluctance that one encounters the promiscuous handling which the
products of the mind have to put up with, as much as the fruit and
provisions in the market-stalls. I had rather be criticised, however,
than criticise; that is, express my opinions in the public prints of
other writers' work, if they are living, and can suffer, as I should
often have to make them. There are enough, thank Heaven, without me. We
are literary cannibals, and our writers live on each other and each
other's productions to a fearful extent. What the mulberry leaf is to
the silk-worm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the
critical larva; that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and
clothing. The process may not be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to
the printed page; but without it the leaf would not have become the silk
that covers the empress's shoulders, and but for the critic the author's
book might never have reached the scholar's table. Scribblers will feed