There is only
one way in which such a book could be, or should be written.
"Peace be with the soul of that charitable and Courteous Author who
introduced the ingenious way of miscellaneous writing," wrote Lord
Shaftsbury in the opening paragraph of his "Miscellaneous Reflections."
Peace be with the souls of all those who, for the delight of the
anointed, have practised that most debonair of all the arts, the
ingenious way of miscellaneous writing! Now, as highly successful
novelists always say nowadays when interviewed for highly successful
newspapers, "I know very little about literature," but I fancy this
benign way of writing had its well-spring in those preposterous days,
now long fled, when men of reading were content to give their best
thoughts first to their friends and then--ten years or so
afterwards--to the "publick." Its period was the day of the
"wits"--those beaux of the mind.
I guess the reason it has gone by the board is that it was what would
be called "literary." And there is nothing we are so scared of to-day
as the literary. It was not those dons the critics, we are told on the
subway cards, who made Dickens immortal--it was YOU.
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