In Swabia, in Saxony, in Pomerania, are towns in which are stationed a
strange sort of officers,--valuers of author's flesh, something like
our old market-lookers in this town. They are commonly called tasters
(or _Praegustatores_) because they eat a mouthful of every book
beforehand, and tell the people whether its flavor be good. We authors,
in spite, call them _reviewers_: but I believe an action of defamation
would lie against us for such bad words. The tasters write no books
themselves; consequently they have the more time to look over and tax
those of other people. Or, if they do sometimes write books, they are
bad ones: which again is very advantageous to them: for who can
understand the theory of badness in other people's books so well as
those who have learned it by practice in their own? They are reputed
the guardians of literature and the literati for the same reason that
St. Nepomuk is the patron saint of bridges and of all who pass over
them,--namely, because he himself once lost his life from a bridge.