Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/75

 III.

[; personal., and therefore very interesting.—"With that dreadful perversity of malice which, as all long-suffering contributors know, characterises editors in general, the editor of this National Reformer hath played me an evil trick. For whereas, knowing well that the more our dear public needs redemption, the more is it disgusted with him who tries to redeem it; and knowing moreover that an editor's existence as editor strictly depends on the favour of this dear stupid public (the stoppage of the circulation of his periodical being quite as fatal to him as the stoppage of the circulation of his blood); I did with infinite generosity and self-sacrifice spontaneously and gratuitously furnish him with ample private and confidential notes for a public disclaimer on his part of any complicity in this my celestial scheme of universal reform, so that the full reprobation of its transcendent merits should weigh upon myself alone: he thereupon, in spite of my solemn written protest, did print and publish the said confidential notes in my name, thus making me seem to damnify my own invaluable essay, and bringing into doubt my intense seriousness, that quality of my character which, as a great moral reformer, I esteem more than almost any other of the lofty and shining virtues which keep me in profound obscurity.

Having thus vindicated myself at the editor's expense, I hasten to add that I will forgive him this atrocious breach of confidence (whatever injury it may do myself and the good cause to which I am devoted) as soon as I have made myself divinely perfect; but that in the meanwhile I am much tempted to exclude editors altogether from my scheme of salvation, as a class of men absolutely incorrigible. As the pious preacher pathetically exclaimed when he had been