This is not pleasant; but neither is this the point.  It may be the critic is right, and the author wrong.  It may be that the archbishop’s sermon is not so fine as some of those discourses twenty years ago which used to delight the faithful in Granada.  Or it may be (pleasing thought!) that the critic is a dullard, and does not understand what he is writing about.  Everybody who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors discoursing about the pictures before their faces.  One says, “This is very well;” another says, “This is stuff and rubbish;” another cries, “Bravo! this is a masterpiece:”  and each has a right to his opinion.  For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes.  This picture is No. 346, “Moses,” by Mr. S. Solomon.  I thought it had a great intention, I thought it finely drawn and composed.  It nobly represented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian bondage, and suggested the touching story.  My newspaper says:  “Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object;” and so good-by, Mr. Solomon.  Are not most of our babies served so in life? and doesn’t Mr. Robinson consider Mr. Brown’s cherub an ugly, squalling little brat?  So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who discoursed on your baby is a bad judge of babies.  When Pharaoh’s kind daughter found the child, and cherished and loved it, and took it home, and found a nurse for it, too, I dare say there were grim, brick-dust colored chamberlains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, yellow princesses at court, who never had children themselves, who cried out, “Faugh! the horrid little squalling wretch!” and knew he would never come to good; and said, “Didn’t I tell you so?” when he assaulted the Egyptian.

Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic pooh-poohs your work of art—­your Moses—­your child—­your foundling.  Why, did not a wiseacre in Blackwood’s Magazine lately fall foul of “Tom Jones?” O hypercritic!  So, to be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could write novels himself—­but you, and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in giving our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave old master.

In these last words I am supposing the respected reader to be endowed with a sense of humor, which he may or may not possess; indeed, don’t we know many an honest man who can no more comprehend a joke than he can turn a tune.  But I take for granted, my dear sir, that you are brimming over with fun—­you mayn’t make jokes, but you could if you would—­you know you could:  and in your quiet way you enjoy them extremely.  Now many people neither make them, nor understand them when made, nor like them when understood, and are suspicious, testy, and angry with jokers.  Have you ever watched an elderly male or female—­an elderly “party,” so to speak, who begins to find out that some young wag of the company is “chaffing” him?