UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
pened by the most untoward of accidents to be just then away "in his yacht" on a cruise among "the western Hebrides;" otherwise, and but for the blundering oversight of some unhappy publisher or editor, the passages which refer with more or less stealthy and suggestive insinuation of preference or of praise to the avowed publications of Mr. Alibi would have come before us with the warrant of that gentleman's honoured name. Credat Judæus Apella! but even the foolishest of our furtive triumvirate will hardly, I should imagine, expect that any son of circumcision or of uncircumcision would believe such a "legend" or give ear to such an "idyl" as that. Rather will he be inclined to meditate somewhat thus, after the fashion of the American poetess at Elijah Pogram's levee:
"To be presented to a Maitland," he will reflect, "by a Buchanan, indeed, an impressive moment is it on what we call our feelings. But why we call them so, or why impressed they are, or if impressed they are at all, or if at all we are, or if there really is, oh gasping one I a Maitland or a Buchanan, or any active principle to which, we give those titles, is a topic spirit-searching, light-abandoned, much too vast to enter on at this unlooked-for crisis." Or it may be he will call to mind an old couplet of some such fashion as this:—
"A man of letters would Crispinus be;
He is a man of letters; yes, of three."
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