“That authors, by their affected pretences to humility, which they made use of as a cloak to insinuate their writings into the callous senses of the multitude, obtuse to everything but the grossest flattery, have by degrees made that great beast their master; as we may act submission to children till we are obliged to practise it in earnest.  That authors are and ought to be considered the masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice versa.  That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus, and would be so again, if it were not that writers prove traitors to themselves.  That, in particular, in the days of the first of those three great authors just mentioned, audiences appear to have been perfect models of what audiences should be; for, though along with the trees and the rocks and the wild creatures, which he drew after him to listen to his strains, some serpents doubtless came to hear his music, it does not appear that any one among them ever lifted up a dissentient voice.  They knew what was due to authors in those days.  Now every stock and stone turns into a serpent, and has a voice.

“That the terms ‘Courteous Reader’ and ‘Candid Auditors,’ as having given rise to a false notion in those to whom they were applied, as if they conferred upon them some right, which they cannot have, of exercising their judgments, ought to be utterly banished and exploded.

“These are our distinguishing tenets.  To keep up the memory of the cause in which we suffered, as the ancients sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy animal, to Aesculapius, on our feast-nights we cut up a goose, an animal typical of the popular voice, to the deities of Candor and Patient Hearing.  A zealous member of the society once proposed that we should revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth; but the stomachs of some of the company rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit of that highly salutary and antidotal dish.

“The privilege of admission to our club is strictly limited to such as have been fairly damned.  A piece that has met with ever so little applause, that has but languished its night or two, and then gone out, will never entitle its author to a seat among us.  An exception to our usual readiness in conferring this privilege is in the case of a writer who, having been once condemned, writes again, and becomes candidate for a second martyrdom.  Simple damnation we hold to be a merit, but to be twice-damned we adjudge infamous.  Such a one we utterly reject, and blackball without a hearing:—­

  “The common damned shun his society.

“Hoping that your publication of our Regulations may be a means of inviting some more members into our society, I conclude this long letter.

“I am, Sir, yours, SEMEL-DAMNATUS.”

* * * * *

DARK WAYS.

  “Tortured with winter’s storms, and tossed with a tumultuous sea.”