issues another extent for the benefit of the Reading Public, and says he means by the annunciation ad clerum, all persons of clerkly acquirements, that is, who can read and write. What wretched stuff is all this! We well remember a friend of his and ours saying, many years ago, on seeing a little shabby volume of Thomson's Seasons lying in the window of a solitary ale-house, at the top of a rock hanging over the British Channel,—"That is true fame!" If he were to write fifty Lay-Sermons, he could not answer the inference from this one sentence, which is, that there are books that make their way wherever there are readers, and that there ought every where to be readers for such books!
To the words Reading Public, in the above passage, is the following note, which in wit and humour does not fall short of Mr. Southey's "Tract on the Madras System:"—
"Some participle passive in the diminutive form, eruditorum natio for instance, might seem at first sight a fuller and more exact designation: but the superior force and humour of the former become evident whenever the phrase occurs, as a step or stair in the climax of irony. . . .Among the revolutions worthy of notice, the change in the introductory sentences and prefatory matter in serious books is not the least striking. The same gross flattery, which disgusts us in the dedications to individuals, in the elder writers, is now transferred to the nation at large, or the Reading Public; while the Jeremiads of our old moralists, and their angry denunciations against the ignorance, immorality, and irreligion of the people appear (mutatis mutandis, and with an appeal to the worst passions, envy, discontent, scorn, vindictiveness,[1] &c.) in the shape of bitter libels on ministers, parliament, the clergy; in short, on the state and church, and all persons employed in them. Likewise, I would point out to the reader's attention the marvellous predominance at present of the words, Idea and Demonstration. Every talker now-a-days has an Idea; aye, and he will demonstrate it too! A few days ago,
- ↑ If these are the worst passions, there is plenty of them in this Lay-Sermon.
