If he is not in a downright comatose state, I suppose he must see that one murder is better or worse than another in point of good taste.  Murders have their little differences and shades of merit as well as statues, pictures, oratorios, cameos, intaglios, or what not.  You may be angry with the man for talking too much, or too publicly, (as to the too much, that I deny—­a man can never cultivate his taste too highly;) but you must allow him to think, at any rate; and you, Doctor, you think, I am sure, both deeply and correctly on the subject.  Well, would you believe it? all my neighbors came to hear of that little aesthetic essay which you had published; and, unfortunately, hearing at the very same time of a club that I as connected with, and a dinner at which I presided—­both tending to the same little object as the essay, viz., the diffusion of a just taste among her majesty’s subjects, they got up the most barbarous calumnies against me.  In particular, they said that I, or that the club, which comes to the same thing, had offered bounties on well conducted homicides—­with a scale of drawbacks, in case of any one defect or flaw, according to a table issued to private friends.  Now, Doctor, I’ll tell you the whole truth about the dinner and the club, and you’ll see how malicious the world is.  But first let me tell you, confidentially, what my real principles are upon the matters in question.

As to murder, I never committed one in my life.  It’s a well known thing amongst all my friends.  I can get a paper to certify as much, signed by lots of people.  Indeed, if you come to that, I doubt whether many people could produce as strong a certificate.  Mine would be as big as a table-cloth.  There is indeed one member of the club, who pretends to say that he caught me once making too free with his throat on a club night, after every body else had retired.  But, observe, he shuffles in his story according to his state of civilation.  When not far gone, he contents himself with saying that he caught me ogling his throat; and that I was melancholy for some weeks after, and that my voice sounded in a way expressing, to the nice ear of a connoisseur, the sense of opportunities lost—­but the club all know that he’s a disappointed man himself, and that he speaks querulously at times about the fatal neglect of a man’s coming abroad without his tools.  Besides, all this is an affair between two amateurs, and every body makes allowances for little asperities and sorenesses in such a case.  “But,” say you, “If no murderer, my correspondent may have encouraged, or even have bespoke a murder.”  No, upon my honor—­nothing of the kind.  And that was the very point I wished to argue for your satisfaction.  The truth is, I am a very particular man in everything relating to murder; and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far.  The Stagyrite most justly, and possibly with a view to my case, placed virtue in the [Greek:  to meson] or middle point between two extremes.