“As the degrees of malignancy vary in people according as they have more or less of the Old Serpent (the father of hisses) in their composition, I have sometimes amused myself with analyzing this many-headed hydra, which calls itself the public, into the component parts of which it is ‘complicated, head and tail,’ and seeing how many varieties of the snake kind it can afford.

“First, there is the Common English Snake.—­This is that part of the auditory who are always the majority at damnations, but who, having no critical venom in themselves to sting them on, stay till they hear others hiss, and then join in for company.

“The Blind Worm is a, species very nearly allied to the foregoing.  Some naturalists have doubted whether they are not the same.

“The Rattle—­Snake.—­These are your obstreperous talking critics,—­the impertinent guides of the pit,—­who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an evening’s entertainment, but, with their frothy jargon and incessant finding of faults, either drown his pleasure quite, or force him in his own defence to join in their clamorous censure.  The hiss always originates with these.  When this creature springs his rattle, you would think, from the noise it makes, there was something in it; but you have only to examine the instrument from which the noise proceeds, and you will find it typical of a critic’s tongue,—­a shallow membrane, empty, voluble, and seated in the most contemptible part of the creature’s body.

“The Whip-Snake.—­This is he that lashes the poor author the next day in the newspapers.

“The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnaeus.—­Under this head may be classed all that portion of the spectators (for audience they properly are not) who, not finding the first act of a piece answer to their preconceived notions of what a first act should be, like Obstinate in John Bunyan, positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they may not hear a word of what is coming, though perhaps the very next act may be composed in a style as different as possible, and be written quite to their own tastes.  These Adders refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning of his instrument gave them offence.

“I should weary you, and myself too, if I were to go through all the classes of the serpent kind.  Two qualities are common to them all.  They are creatures of remarkably cold digestions, and chiefly haunt pits and low grounds.

“I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account of a club to which I have the honor to belong.  There are fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been once in our lives what is called damned.  We meet on the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make ourselves merry at the expense of the public.  The chief tenets which distinguish our society, and which every man among us is bound to hold for gospel, are,—­

“That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages.  That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble.  That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets, and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever we think fit.