thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters
that never met a human eye before--this is a luxury worth sacrificing a
dinner party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when
the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out,
or to face a _coterie_ of blue stockings in the evening, without having
gone through this ordeal, or at least without, hastily turning over a
few of the first pages while dressing, to be able to say that the
beginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?

[2] "Laws are not like women, the worse for being old."--_The
Duke of Buckingham's Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles
the Second's time_.

A new work is something in our power; we mount the bench, and sit in
judgment on it; we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can
decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have
not yet read it, and expect an account of it; and thus show our
shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had
time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by
busying ourselves about it, a kind of _accessaries after the fact_.
Though not the parent of the bantling that "has just come into this
breathing world, scarce half made up," without the aid of criticism and
puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on the occasion, with
all the mysterious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we
wait, we must take our report from others; if we make haste, we may
dictate ours to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of
information, but for precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work
last out is the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the
subject on the _tapis_--the cause that is pending. It is the last
candidate for success, (other claims have been disposed of,) and appeals