Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/10

vi with flattery to bear criticism, and too querulous and humorsome to perceive the real issues of the case.

My imputed crime is as follows: that I did not sign my own name to the article, and that I spoke in high terms of my own poems.

The first account has been disposed of by the simple statement that I did not sign the article at all. If it be retorted that the rule of the Contemporary Review is never to admit pseudonyms or unsigned articles, I answer that at least three of the regular contributors to that Review have habitually used pseudonyms, and that, in an early number of the same publication, Dean Mansell sharply criticized Mr. Mill in an unsigned article in which he spoke of himself in the third person, afterwards reprinting the article, with his own name, as "The Philosophy of the Conditioned."

The second count, which charges me with secret self-praise, is so absurd an attempt to distract judgment that it is almost unworthy of mention. In an opening paragraph (now suppressed for its weakness) I drew out a sort of sketch of Hamlet as "cast" by the contemporary poets, Mr. Tennyson of course assuming the leading character; and among the list of smaller parts I humorously spoke of myself as playing the part of—what? Horatio? The King? Polonius? Rosencranz? Guildenstern? Osric? Of none of these, small or great, but simply that of "Cornelius!" I imagined then that I was writing for readers who had read their Shakspere, or who had at any rate seen his great tragedy murdered on the stage, and never dreamt I should have to explain (as I am now forced to explain) that "Cornelius" is one of those two gentlemen who appear in Scene II. in the usual way of what are technically known