The first is the beginning, the second the middle, and the third is the end.
The painter who, in times of yore, exposed his canvas to universal criticism, and found, to his mortification, that there was not a particle of his composition which had not been pronounced defective by one pseudo-critic or another, did not receive severer castigation than I have experienced from the _unsolicited_ remarks of "d----d good-natured friends."
"I like your first and second volume," said a tall, long-chinned, short-sighted blue, dressed in yellow, peering into my face, as if her eyes were magnifying glasses, and she was obtaining the true focus of vision, "but you fall off in your last, which is all about that _nasty_ line-of-battle ship."
"I don't like your plot, sir," bawls out in a stentorian voice an elderly gentleman; "I don't like your plot, sir," repeated he with an air of authority, which he had long assumed, from supposing because people would not be at the trouble of contradicting his opinions, that they were incontrovertible--"there is nothing but death."
"Death, my dear sir," replied I, as if I was hailing the lookout man at the mast-head, and hoping to soften him with my intentional bull; "is not death, sir, a true picture of human life?"
"Ay, ay," growled he, either not hearing or not _taking_; "it's all very well, but--there's too much killing in it."
"In a novel, sir, killing's no murder, you surely will admit; and you must also allow something for professional feeling--''tis my occupation;' and after five-and-twenty years of constant practice, whether I wield the sword or the pen, the force of habit----"
"It won't do, sir," interrupted he; "the public don't like it. Otherwise," continued this hypercritic, softening a little, "some of the chapters are amusing, and, on the whole, it may be said to be rather--that is--not unpleasantly written."
"I like your first and third volume, but not your second," squeaked out _something_ intended to have been a woman, with shoulder-blades and collar-bones, as De Ville would say, most strongly developed.
"Well now, I don't exactly agree with you, my dear Miss Peego; I think the second and third volumes are by far the most _readable_" exclaimed _another thing_, perched upon a chair, with her feet dangling half way between her seat and the carpet.