Page:A fable for critics - or, better ... A glance at a few of our literary progenies ... (IA fableforcritics00loweiala).pdf/11

iii. , without farther, to my friend , Esquire, in Broadway, where a will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time, (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme,) I will honestly give each his, at the rate of to each. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to  their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill.

One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle reader, and you. All the characters sketched in this slight jeu d'esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, rather free, and drawn from a Mephistophelian stand-point, are meant to be faithful, and that is the grand point, and none but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.