UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
imposes on their kind the brand of a shameful penalty; and it is not every day that an honest man will care to come forward and procure its infliction on some representative rascal of the tribe at the price of having to swear that the spittle aimed at his face came from the lips of a liar; that he has not lived on such terms of intimacy with the honest gentleman at the bar that the confidential and circumstantial report given of his life and opinions, habits and theories, person and conversation, is absolutely to be taken for gospel by the curious in such matters. The age of Pope is past, and we no longer expect a man of note to dive into the common sink of letters for the purpose of unearthing from its native place and nailing up by the throat in sight of day any chance vermin that may slink out in foul weather to assail him. The celebrity of Oldmixon and Curll is no longer attainable by dint of scurrilous persistency in provocation; in vain may the sons of the sewer look up with longing eyes after the hope of such peculiar immortality as that bestowed by Swift on the names of Whiston and Ditton: upon their upturned faces there will fall no drop or flake of such unfragrant fame. When some one told Dr. Johnson that a noted libeller had been publicly kicked in the streets of Dublin, his answer was to the effect that he was glad to hear of so clever a man rising so rapidly in the world; when he was in London, no one at whom his
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