Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/11

Rh as "utility" people, and after uttering together this one memorable line—

exeunt in all humility.In a subsequent scene they return, and Voltimand, the other gentleman, makes a speech, while "Cornelius" stands in the usual "utility" attitude, with one leg bent and one hand laid gracefully on his hips. This is the proud character I am accused of arrogating to myself in the grand list of contemporary performances! Surely, if I had been ambitious of obtruding my own merits, I might at least have gone in for Fortinbras or the First Gravedigger!

The other allusion to "my own poems" will be found on page 46 of this pamphlet. It simply chronicles a fact, and is neither complimentary nor the reverse.

The truth is, all this hubbub about the authorship is a vulgar farce, got up to distract public attention. My article was altered and my name suppressed with the best of all motives—that of letting the charges contained in it stand on their own merits, and that of saving me from the persecution of a clique of literary Mohawks; but it is a pity any alteration was made at all.

Be that as it may, let me entreat my readers not to let their attention be distracted by any consideration of me personally. Let them carefully accept and weigh the evidence brought forward in these pages, and judge the case on its own merits. The clatter that is being made about the authorship is only meant to excite the public against a patient examination of this "most damning" indictment against the Fleshly School of Poetry.

The most curious part of the whole affair remains to be