Thus every one will recognise the feature of a favourite, and one feature in a whole face is as much as they ought to expect.
Admit no _puns_ into your miscellany. Dennis, the critic, has said, and I know not how many others after him, that a punster is no better than a pickpocket, and with truth, for how dare any quibbling varlet attempt to rob his neighbour of any portion of that delightful inflexibility, the very taciturnity of which bespeaks what _wisdom_ may lie _buried_ in a _grave_ demeanour?
Be not too _sentimental_ neither; nor copy the infantine simplicity of those dear little children of the _Della Cruscan_ school, who, "_lisp in numbers_." Do not let them lisp in any number of your publication. No sir, like sir Peter Teazle, I say, "curse your sentiments;" for the man whose effeminate ideas, expressed in effeminate accents, would contribute to lessen the manly character of the English nation, deserves to be lost in a labyrinth, as I am now, and left in the lurch for a finish to each sentence he commences.
On the other hand, you must carefully shun the affectation of _bombastic diction_--it is lamentable to see a preelucidated theme rendered semidiaphonous, by the elimination of simple expression, to make room for the conglomeration of pondrous periods, and to exhibit the phonocamptic coxcombry of some pedant, who mistakes sentences for wagons, and words for the wheels of them.
Avoid _alliteration_, allowed by all to be the very vehicle of vitious verbosity, particularly in a periodical publication; therefore, the thought that dully depends, during lengthened lines of lumbering lucubration, on innumerable initials introduced instead of rhyme or reason, is really reprehensible. Shakspeare, scorning the sufferance of such a sneaking style, said "Wit whither wilt?"
Lest you should put the same question to me, I will give you my concluding piece of advice, which is, that you should beware of introducing second hand _Rural Tales_ and essays, from the successful labours of your predecessors. Such things _have_ happened more than once, and I remember reading a letter to the editor, in the first number of a new magazine, which was unfortunately signed by, _An Old Subscriber_.