A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, called on to write, though there are, it is said, who, their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times a year, and in this way snuff up an imaginary savor of that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor,—­much as if a starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside to a picture of meat.

You remember (if not, pray turn, backward and look) that, in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, but downright cavalierly.  Now I would not take back the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or taught; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that the persons by whom it is finally earned are those with whom your verdict weighed not a pin, unsustained by the higher court sitting within.

But I wander from what I intended to say,—­that you have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, and so much aesthetic perception of anonymous worth in the handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some private piques (having bought the first thousand in barely two weeks), that I think, past a doubt, if you measured the phiz of yours most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you would find that its vertical section was shorter, by an inch and two tenths, or ’twixt that and a quarter.

You have watched a child playing—­in those wondrous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard?  Give a knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times.  Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, ’Jack, let’s play that I am a Genius!’ Jacky straightway makes Aladdin’s lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers.  This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins, have grown into men, and both have turned authors,—­one says to his brother, ’Let’s play we’re the American somethings or other,—­say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what).  Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose:  I’ll be Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews.’  So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send each other a cord of anonymous