opinion, is very undeserving the noise that has been made about it,
and still more unworthy of the serious employment of such ingenuity as
has been displayed by the young letter-writer.

_Captain._ But allowing, my dear sir, that you care not for your
personal reputation, or for that of any literary person upon whose
shoulders your faults may be visited, allow me to say, that common
gratitude to the public, which has received you so kindly, and to the
critics, who have treated you so leniently, ought to induce you to
bestow more pains on your story.

_Author._ I do entreat you, my son, as Dr. Johnson would have said,
"free your mind from cant." For the critics, they have their business,
and I mine; as the nursery proverb goes--

"The children in Holland take pleasure in making What the children in
England take pleasure in breaking."

I am their humble jackal, too busy in providing food for them, to have
time for considering whether they swallow or reject it.--To the
public, I stand pretty nearly in the relation of the postman who
leaves a packet at the door of an individual. If it contains pleasing
intelligence, a billet from a mistress, a letter from an absent son, a
remittance from a correspondent supposed to be bankrupt,--the letter
is acceptably welcome, and read and re-read, folded up, filed, and
safely deposited in the bureau. If the contents are disagreeable, if
it comes from a dun or from a bore, the correspondent is cursed, the
letter is thrown into the fire, and the expense of postage is heartily
regretted; while all the time the bearer of the dispatches is, in
either case, as little thought on as the snow of last Christmas. The