Lancaster, Pennsylvania
March 1941
[1] In the present text deleted letters are supplied within square
brackets. Originally the use of blanks and asterisks in names of persons
was a means of avoiding libel actions. One should never print a man’s
name out at length, said Swift in _The Importance of the Guardian
Considered_, 1713; “but, as I do, that of Mr. St—le: so that, although
everybody alive knows whom I mean, the plaintiff can have no redress
in any court of justice.” This was such an easy way to add piquancy to
defamation that it became conventional in satire. In 1778 the reviewer of
an anti-ministerial poem called _The Conquerors_ observed that the work
seemed “designed for the perusal of astronomers; there are more _stars_
in it than the galaxy contains” (_The Critical Review_, XLV, 150).