Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/353

 SATIRICAL NOTICE OF REVIEWERS.

N Swabia, in Saxony, in Pomerania, are towns in which are stationed a strange sort of officers,—valuers of author's flesh, something like our old marketlookers in this town. They are commonly called tasters (or Prægustatores) because they eat a mouthful of every book beforehand, and tell the people whether its flavor be good. We authors, in spite, call them reviewers: but I believe an action of defamation would lie against us for such bad words. The tasters write no books themselves; consequently they have the more time to look over and tax those of other people. Or, if they do sometimes write books, they are bad ones: which again is very advantageous to them: for who can understand the theory of badness in other people's books so well as those who have learned it by practice in their own? They are reputed the guardians of literature and the literati for the same reason that St. Nepomuk is the patron saint of bridges and of all who pass over them,—namely, because he himself once lost his life from a bridge.

FEMALE TONGUES.

IPPEL, the author of the book "Upon Marriage," says, "A woman, that does not talk, must be a stupid woman." But Hippel is an author whose opinions it is more safe to admire than to adopt. The most intelligent women are often silent amongst women; and again the most stupid and the most silent are often neither one nor the other except amongst men. In general the current remark upon men is valid also with respect to