A SEQUEL TO 'MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.' [1]

[1854.]


It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine and gloomy a class,
that they cannot enter with genial sympathy into any gaiety whatever, but,
least of all, when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of the
extravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize is not to understand; and
the playfulness, which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid, or
absolutely without meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls have
withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there remains a large
majority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they have
derived from a former paper of mine, 'On Murder considered as one of the
Fine Arts;' at the same time proving the sincerity of their praise by one
hesitating expression of censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me,
that perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, and forming one
element in the general gaiety of the conception, went too far. I am not
myself of that opinion; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, that
it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this _bagatelle_ to
graze the brink of horror, and of all that would in actual realization be
most repulsive. The very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by
suggesting to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the entire
speculation, furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from the
horror which might else gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such
objectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for turning to account
the supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms, which, in those days,
both at Dublin and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, by
cooking and eating them. This was an extravaganza, though really bolder
and more coarsely practical than mine, which did not provoke any