text:  But how inadequately are the goose quills and ostrich quills phoenix quills and roc quills of the few standard critics of the age directed towards the monstrous abuse of public patience which will render the Victorian age the sad antithesis of the Elizabethan in the literary history of the land! Content so long as they can get a new work _tale quale_ as a peg whereon to hang the rusty garments of their erudition not a straw care they for the miserable decline and fall of the great empire of letters; an empire overrun by what Goths--what Huns--what Vandals!--by the iniquitous and barbarous hosts of circulating libraries! It has been agreed for some centuries past that the only modern Maecenas is the publisher