account, and, while his purse holds out to bleed, will make it a good one.  But until all these high and mighty things happen,—­until we come into our property,—­we must make the best of matters.  I know a clever Broadway publisher, who, if I were able to meet the expenses, would bring out my minor poems in all the pomp of cream-laid paper, and with all the circumstance of velvet binding, with illustrations by Darley, and with favorable notices in all the newspapers.  I should cut a fine figure, metaphorically, if not arithmetically speaking; whereas my farthing rush-light is now sputtering, clinkering, and guttering to waste, and all because I have not a pair of silver snuffers.  If you wish me to move the world, produce your lever!  Your wealthy bard has at least audience; and if he cannot sing, he may thank his own hoarse throat, and not the Destinies.

For myself, dear Don Bob, having come into my inheritance of oblivion while living,—­having in vain called upon Fame to sound the trumpet, which I am sure is so obstinately plugged that it will never syllable my name,—­having resolutely determined to be nobody,—­I do not waste my sympathy upon myself, but generously bestow it upon a mob of fine fellows in all ages, who deserved, but did not grasp, a better fortune.  All that live in human recollection are but a handful to the tribes that have been forgotten.  You will be kind enough, my sardonic friend, to repress your sneers.  I tell you that a great many worthy gentlemen and ladies have been shouldered out of the Pantheon who deserved at least a corner, and who would not while living have given sixpence to insure immortality, so certain were they of monuments harder than brass.  The murrain among the poets is the severest.  For, in the first place, a fine butterfly may have a pin stuck through his stomach even while living.  There are Bavius and Maevius, who have been laughed at since Virgil wrote his Third Eclogue.  Now why does the world laugh?  What does the world know of either?  They were stupid and malevolent, were they?  Pray, how do you know that they were?  You have Virgil’s word for it.  But how do you know that Virgil was just?  It might have been the east wind; it might have been an indigestion; it might have been Virgil’s vanity; it might have been all a mistake.  When a man has once been thoroughly laughed down, people take his stupidity for granted; and although he may grow as wise as Solomon, living he is considered a fool, dying he is regarded as a fool, and dead he is remembered as a fool.  Do you not suppose that very responsible folk were pilloried in the “Dunciad”?  My own opinion is, that a person must have had some merit, or he would not have been put there at all.  How many of those who laugh at Dennis and Shadwell know anything of either?  And let me ask you if the Pope set had such a superabundance of heart, that you would have been willing, with childlike confidence, to submit your own verses to their criticism?  For myself, I am free to say that I have no patience with satirists.  I never knew a just one.  I never heard of a fair one.  They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,—­they are a supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,—­knocking down their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own gratification,—­mere Mohawks, kept by family influence out of the lock-up.