In this book-making age, every man rushes to the press with his small
morsel of imbecility, his little piece of favourite nonsense, and is
not easy till he sees his impertinence stitched in blue covers. Some
one possesses the vivacity of a harlequin--he is fuddled with animal
spirits, giddy with constitutional joy; in such a state, he must write
or burst: a discharge of ink is an evacuation absolutely necessary to
avoid fatal and plethoric congestion. A musty and limited pedant
yellows himself a little among rolls and records, plunders a few
libraries, and, lo! we have an entire new work by the learned Mr
Dunce, and that after an incubation of only one month. He is, perhaps,
a braggadocio of minuteness, a swaggering chronologer, a man bristling
up with small facts, prurient with dates, wantoning in obsolete
evidence. No matter; there are plenty of newspapers who are constantly
lavishing their praises upon small men and bad books. A mendacious
press will puff the book through a brief season, and then it will go
to feed the devouring maw of the past.--_New York Chronicle._