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 126 that had wounded him. On the other side, those authors whose defensive powers were of a less prompt and efficient character ventured no nearer to a quarrel than—to borrow a simile of George Eliot's—a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. Southey, who of all men entertained the most comfortable opinion of his own merits, must have been deeply angered by the treatment Thalaba and Madoc received from the Edinburgh Review; yet we cannot see that either he or his admirers looked upon Jeffrey in any other light than that of a tyrannical but perfectly legitimate authority. Far nobler victims suffered from the same bitter sting, and they too nursed their wounds in a decorous silence.

But it is very different to-day, when every injured aspirant to the Temple of Fame assures himself and a sympathizing public, not that a particular critic is mistaken in his particular case, which we may safely take for granted, but that all critics are necessarily wrong in all cases, through an abnormal development of what the catechism terms