I should spend days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full foreknowledge that their admission would not have offended three of all my readers, and might perhaps be deemed beauties by three hundred—if so many there were; and this not out of any respect for the public (i.e., the persons who might happen to purchase and look over the book) but from a hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of Duty. Language is the sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and counterfeit Frankincense which render its flames at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a Public, commences the degradation of the Good and the Beautiful—both fade and retire before the accidentally Agreeable. Othello becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the Castle Spectre, or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that may have overbillowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is
