text:  Every tyro is aware that this Sams or Ebers of antiquity lent out to Ptolemy of Egypt for a first-rate subscription of fifteen talents the works of Euripides Eschylus and Sophocles; thereby affording a precedent for the abominable practice fatal to bookmakers and booksellers which has converted the waters of Castalia into their present disgraceful puddle! Every scribbler of the day who has a Perryian pen in hand is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners