text:  But thou O Vanity! thou curse thou shame thou sin with what tides of _pseudo_ talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass dolt miscalculator quack pretender how many hast thou befooled thou father of multifarious fools? Serpent tempter evil one how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail the carpenter's bench the schoolmaster's desk the rural scene to plunge them into misery and contempt in this the abiding-place of their betters thou unhanged cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times and the neglect of genius and appeals to posterity and damnation of managers publishers and the public; hence cliques and _claqueurs_ and coteries and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings quarellings backbitings slanderings and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning like a pestilence the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts