The merchant promised that the commission should be speedily executed; and Paul, shaking hands with him, proceeded to the mansion of Mac Grawler.

We must now go back somewhat in the natural course of our narrative, and observe, that among the minor causes which had conspired with the great one of gambling to bring our excellent Paul to his present situation, was his intimacy with Mac Grawler; for when Paul’s increasing years and roving habits had put an end to the sage’s instructions, there was thereby lopped off from the preceptor’s finances the weekly sum of two shillings and sixpence, as well as the freedom of the dame’s cellar and larder; and as, in the reaction of feeling, and the perverse course of human affairs, people generally repent the most of those actions once the most ardently incurred; so poor Mrs Lobkins, imagining that Paul’s irregularities were entirely owing to the knowledge he had acquired from Mac Grawler’s instructions, grievously upbraided herself for her former folly, in seeking for a superior education for her protégé: nay, she even vented upon the sacred head of Mac Grawler himself her dissatisfaction at the results of his instructions. In like manner, when a man who can spell comes to be hanged, the anti-educationists accuse the spelling-book of his murder. High words between the admirer of ignorant innocence and the propagator of intellectual science ensued, which ended in Mac Grawler’s final expulsion from the Mug.

There are some young gentlemen of the present day addicted to the adoption of Lord Byron’s poetry, with the alteration of new rhymes, who are pleased graciously to inform us, that they are born to be the ruin of all those who love them: an interesting fact, doubtless, but which they might as well keep to themselves. It would seem by the contents of this chapter, as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of Mac Grawler, – the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker, – alike occasioned by him, appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects. But Mac Grawler, like Dunnaker, was resolved that our hero should perceive the curse of his fatality; and as he still retained some influence over the mind of his quondam pupil, his accusations against Paul, as the origin of his banishment, were attended with a greater success than were the complaints of Dummie Dunnaker on a similar calamity. Paul, who, like most people who are good for nothing, had an excellent heart, was exceedingly grieved at Mac Grawler’s banishment on his account: and he endeavoured to atone for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These Mac Grawler (purely, we may suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen the boy’s remorse) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary Mac Grawler conspired with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish, in producing that unenviable state of vacuity which now saddened over the pockets of Paul.

As our hero was slowly walking towards the sage’s abode, depending on his gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those lightning flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss of affliction darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic, he remembered that he had seen that ornament of the Asinæum receive sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

‘Why,’ said Paul, seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the street, ‘why should I not turn critic myself?’

The only person to whom one ever puts a question with a tolerable certainty of receiving a satisfactory answer is one’s self. The moment Paul started this luminous suggestion, it appeared to him that he had discovered the mines of Potosi. Burning with impatience to discuss with the great Mac Grawler the feasibility of his project, he quickened his pace almost into a run, and in a very few minutes, having only overthrown one chimney-sweeper and two apple-women by the way, he arrived at the sage’s door.

Chapter V

   Ye realms yet unreveal’d to human sight!

   Ye canes athwart the hapless hands that write!

   Ye critic chiefs – permit me to relate

   The mystic wonders of your silent state!

     Virgil, Aeneid

Fortune had smiled upon Mr Mac Grawler since he first undertook the tuition of Mrs Lobkins’s protégé. He now inhabited a second-floor, and defied the sheriff and his evil spirits. It was at the dusk of evening that Paul found him at home and alone.

Before the mighty man stood a pot of London porter; a candle, with an unregarded wick, shed its solitary light upon his labours; and an infant cat played sportively at his learned feet, beguiling the weary moments with the remnants of the spiral cap wherewith, instead of laurel, the critic had hitherto nightly adorned his brows.

So soon as Mac Grawler, piercing through the gloomy mist which hung about the chamber, perceived the person of the intruder, a frown settled upon his brow.

‘Have I not told you, youngster!’ he growled, ‘never to enter a gentleman’s room without knocking? I tell you, sir, that manners are no less essential to human happiness than virtue; wherefore, never disturb a gentleman in his avocations, and sit yourself down without molesting the cat!’

Paul, who knew that his respected tutor disliked any one to trace the source of the wonderful spirit which he infused into his critical compositions, affected not to perceive the pewter Hippocrene, and with many apologies for his want of preparatory politeness, seated himself as directed. It was then that the following edifying conversation ensued.

‘The ancients,’ quoth Paul, ‘were very great men, Mr Mac Grawler.’

‘They were so, sir,’ returned the critic; ‘we make it a rule in our profession to assert that fact!’

‘But, sir,’ said Paul, ‘they were wrong now and then.’

‘Never, Ignoramus; never!’

‘They praised poverty, Mr Mac Grawler!’ said Paul, with a sigh.

‘Hem!’ quoth the critic, a little staggered, but presently recovering his characteristic acumen, he observed, –

‘It is true, Paul; but that was the poverty of other people.’

There was a slight pause. ‘Criticism,’ renewed Paul, ‘must be a most difficult art.’

‘A-hem! And what art is there, sir, that is not difficult – at least, to become master of?’

‘True,’ sighed Paul; ‘or else –’

‘Or else what, boy?’ repeated Mr Mac Grawler, seeing that Paul hesitated, either from fear of his superior knowledge, as the critic’s vanity suggested, or from (what was equally likely) want of a word to express his meaning.

‘Why, I was thinking, sir,’ said Paul, with that desperate courage which gives a distinct and loud intonation to the voice of all who set, or think they set, their fate upon a cast: ‘I was thinking that I should like to become a critic myself!’

‘W–h–e–w!’ whistled Mac Grawler, elevating his eyebrows; ‘w–h–e–w! Great ends have come of less beginnings!’

Encouraging as this assertion was, coming as it did from the lips of so great a man and so great a critic, at the very moment too when nothing short of an anathema against arrogance and presumption was expected to issue from those portals of wisdom: yet, such is the fallacy of all human hopes, that Paul’s of a surety would have been a little less elated, had he, at the same time his ears drank in the balm of these gracious words, been able to have dived into the source whence they emanated.

‘Know thyself!’ was a precept the sage Mac Grawler had endeavoured to obey: consequently the result of his obedience was, that even by himself he was better known than trusted. Whatever he might appear to others, he had in reality no vain faith in the infallibility of his own talents and resources; as well might a butcher deem himself a perfect anatomist from the frequent amputation of legs of mutton, as the critic of the Asinæum have laid ‘the flattering unction to his soul,’ that he was really skilled in the art of criticism, or even acquainted with one of its commonest rules, because he could with all speed cut up and disjoint any work, from the smallest to the greatest, from the most superficial to the most superior; and thus it was that he never had the want of candour to deceive himself as to his own talents. Paul’s wish, therefore, was no sooner expressed, than a vague but golden scheme of future profit illumed the brain of Mac Grawler: – in a word, he resolved that Paul should henceforward share the labour of his critiques; and that he, Mac Grawler, should receive the whole profits in return for the honour thereby conferred on his coadjutor.

Looking, therefore, at our hero with a benignant air, Mr Mac Grawler thus continued: –

‘Yes, I repeat, – great ends have come from less beginnings! – Rome was not built in a day, – and I, Paul, I myself was not always the editor of the Asinæum. You say wisely, criticism is a great science – a very great science, and it may be divided into three branches; viz. “to tickle, to slash, and to plaster.” In each of these three, I believe without vanity, I am a profound adept! I will initiate you into all. Your labours shall begin this very evening. I have three works on my table, they must be despatched by tomorrow night; I will take the most arduous, I abandon to you the others. The three consist of a Romance, an Epic in twelve books, and an Inquiry into the Human Mind, in three volumes; I, Paul, will tickle the Romance, you this very evening shall plaster the Epic and slash the Inquiry!’

‘Heavens, Mr Mac Grawler!’ cried Paul, in consternation, ‘what do you mean? I should never be able to read an epic in twelve books, and I should fall asleep in the first page of the Inquiry. No, no, leave me the Romance, and take the other two under your own protection!’

Although great genius is always benevolent, Mr Mac Grawler could not restrain a smile of ineffable contempt at the simplicity of his pupil.

‘Know, young gentleman,’ said he solemnly, ‘that the Romance in question must be tickled; it is not given to raw beginners to conquer that great mystery of our science.’

‘Before we proceed farther, explain the words of the art,’ said Paul, impatiently.

‘Listen, then,’ rejoined Mac Grawler; and as he spoke the candle cast an awful glimmering on his countenance. ‘To slash is, speaking grammatically, to employ the accusative, or accusing case; you must cut up your book right and left, top and bottom, root and branch. To plaster a book, is to employ the dative, or giving case, and you must bestow on the work all the superlatives in the language; you must lay on your praise thick and thin, and not leave a crevice untrowelled. But to tickle, sir, is a comprehensive word, and it comprises all the infinite varieties that fill the interval between slashing and plastering. This is the nicety of the art, and you can only acquire it by practice; a few examples will suffice to give you an idea of its delicacy.

‘We will begin with the encouraging tickle. “Although this work is full of faults; though the characters are unnatural, the plot utterly improbable, the thoughts hackneyed, and the style ungrammatical; yet we would by no means discourage the author from proceeding; and in the meanwhile we confidently recommend his work to the attention of the reading public.”

‘Take, now, the advising tickle. ‘

“There is a good deal of merit in these little volumes, although we must regret the evident haste in which they were written. The author might do better – we recommend him a study of the best writers,” – then conclude by a Latin quotation, which you may take from one of the mottoes in the Spectator.

‘Now, young gentleman, for a specimen of the metaphorical tickle.

‘“We beg this poetical aspirant to remember the fate of Pyrenæus, who, attempting to pursue the Muses, forgot that he had not the wings of the goddesses, flung himself from the loftiest ascent he could reach, and perished.”

‘This you see, Paul, is a loftier and more erudite sort of tickle, and may be reserved for one of the Quarterly Reviews. Never throw away a simile unnecessarily.

‘Now for a sample of the facetious tickle.

‘“Mr — has obtained a considerable reputation! Some fine ladies think him a great philosopher, and he has been praised in our hearing by some Cambridge Fellows, for his knowledge of fashionable society.”

‘For this sort of tickle we generally use the dullest of our tribe, and I have selected the foregoing example from the criticisms of a distinguished writer in the Asinæum, whom we call, par excellence, the Ass.

‘There is a variety of other tickles; the familiar, the vulgar, the polite, the good-natured, the bitter: but in general all tickles may be supposed to signify, however disguised, one or other of these meanings: – “This book would be exceedingly good if it were not exceedingly bad;” – or, “This book would be exceedingly bad if it were not exceedingly good.”

‘You have now, Paul, a general idea of the superior art required by the tickle?’

Our hero signified his assent by a sort of hysterical sound between a laugh and a groan. Mac Grawler continued: –

‘There is another grand difficulty attendant on this class of criticism, – it is generally requisite to read a few pages of the work; because we seldom tickle without extracting, and it requires some judgement to make the context agree with the extract; but it is not often necessary to extract when you slash or when you plaster; when you slash, it is better in general to conclude with –

‘“After what we have said, it is unnecessary to add that we cannot offend the taste of our readers by any quotation from this execrable trash.” And when you plaster, you may wind up with, “We regret that our limits will not allow us to give any extracts from this wonderful and unrivalled work. We must refer our readers to the book itself.”

‘And now, sir, I think I have given you a sufficient outline of the noble science of Scaliger and Mac Grawler. Doubtless you are reconciled to the task I have allotted you; and while I tickle the Romance, you will slash the Inquiry and plaster the Epic!’

‘I will do my best, sir!’ said Paul, with that modest yet noble simplicity which becomes the virtuously ambitious: – and Mac Grawler forthwith gave him pen and paper, and set him down to his undertaking.

He had the good fortune to please Mac Grawler, who, after having made a few corrections in style, declared he evinced a peculiar genius in that branch of composition. And then it was that Paul, made conceited by praise, said, looking contemptuously in the face of his preceptor, and swinging his legs to and fro, – ‘And what, sir, shall I receive for the plastered Epic and the slashed Inquiry?’ As the face of the school-boy who, when guessing, as he thinks rightly, at the meaning of some mysterious word in Cornelius Nepos, receiveth not the sugared epithet of praise, but a sudden stroke across the os humerosve,* even so, blank, puzzled, and thunder-stricken, waxed the face of Mr Mac Grawler, at the abrupt and astounding audacity of Paul.

‘Receive!’ he repeated, ‘receive! – Why, you impudent, ungrateful puppy, would you steal the bread from your old master? If I can obtain for your crude articles an admission into the illustrious pages of the Asinæum, will you not be sufficiently paid, sir, by the honour? Answer me that.