“But Lavengro pretends to be an autobiography,” say the critics; and here the writer begs leave to observe, that it would be well for people who profess to have a regard for truth, not to exhibit in every assertion which they make a most profligate disregard of it; this assertion of theirs is a falsehood, and they know it to be a falsehood.  In the preface Lavengro is stated to be a dream; and the writer takes this opportunity of stating that he never said it was an autobiography; never authorized any person to say that it was one; and that he has in innumerable instances declared in public and private, both before and after the work was published, that it was not what is generally termed an autobiography:  but a set of people who pretend to write criticisms on books, hating the author for various reasons,—­amongst others, because, having the proper pride of a gentleman and a scholar, he did not, in the year ’43, choose to permit himself to be exhibited and made a zany of in London, and especially because he will neither associate with, nor curry favour with, them who are neither gentlemen nor scholars,—­ attack his book with abuse and calumny.  He is, perhaps, condescending too much when he takes any notice of such people; as, however, the English public is wonderfully led by cries and shouts, and generally ready to take part against any person who is either unwilling or unable to defend himself, he deems it advisable not to be altogether quiet with those who assail him.  The best way to deal with vipers is to tear out their teeth; and the best way to deal with pseudo-critics is to deprive them of their poison-bag, which is easily done by exposing their ignorance.  The writer knew perfectly well the description of people with whom he would have to do, he therefore very quietly prepared a stratagem, by means of which he could at any time exhibit them, powerless and helpless, in his hand.  Critics, when they review books, ought to have a competent knowledge of the subjects which those books discuss.

Lavengro is a philological book, a poem if you choose to call it so.  Now, what a fine triumph it would have been for those who wished to vilify the book and its author, provided they could have detected the latter tripping in his philology—­they might have instantly said that he was an ignorant pretender to philology—­they laughed at the idea of his taking up a viper by its tail, a trick which hundreds of country urchins do every September, but they were silent about the really wonderful part of the book, the philological matter—­they thought philology was his stronghold, and that it would be useless to attack him there; they of course would give him no credit as a philologist, for anything like fair treatment towards him was not to be expected at their hands, but they were afraid to attack his philology—­yet that was the point, and the only point in which they might have attacked him successfully; he was vulnerable there.  How was this?