Here is a book which will be read, no thanks to anybody but
itself. What pains, what hopes, what vows, shall come of the
reading! Here is a book as full of treason as an egg is full of
meat, and every lordship and worship and high form and ceremony of
English conservatism tossed like a foot-ball into the air, and kept
in the air with merciless kicks and rebounds, and yet not a word is
punishable by statute. The wit has eluded all official zeal; and yet
these dire jokes, these cunning thrusts, this flaming sword of
Cherubim waved high in air illuminates the whole horizon, and shows
to the eyes of the universe every wound it inflicts. Worst of all
for the party attacked, it bereaves them beforehand of all sympathy,
by anticipating the plea of poetic and humane conservatism, and
impressing the reader with the conviction, that the satirist himself
has the truest love for everything old and excellent in English land
and institutions, and a genuine respect for the basis of truth in
those whom he exposes.
We are at some loss how to state what strikes us as the fault
of this remarkable book, for the variety and excellence of the talent
displayed in it is pretty sure to leave all special criticism in the
wrong.
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