We looked with awe upon this wholesale "smasher." We trembled lest we should be the next victim, and involuntarily curled ourselves up in the dark corner of the box to avoid his destructive notice.
A stranger who came in happened to lay upon the table a series of engravings, which had just been published, and were selling, it was reported, most extensively. "Excuse me, sir," he said, taking up one of them; "I hope you've not been buying this rubbish? It is nothing but a rank imitation of Hogarth—without any of his talent, execution, or purpose. It is satire diluted to the weakest gin and water. The fellow who has put his name to it deserves to be smashed, and I have a good mind to do it."
"In mercy, I hope, you will change your mind, sir," said the stranger, rising and taking off his hat; "or at all events, that you will stop till I have had my supper. You wouldn't smash a poor '_fellow_' with an empty stomach, surely?" and he held out his hand with smiling good-humour to his intended "smasher."
The laugh went against the latter, and seemingly it did not sweeten much the fine cordial spirit through which he viewed men and things.
In the course of the general conversation "Macbeth" was mentioned. "Macbeth!" he exclaimed; "a stupid, vulgar melodrama, only fit for the Britannia Saloon. Why, it wouldn't succeed at the present day unless it was brought out as a pantomime with plenty of blue fire. In my opinion, Shakspeare is a tremendous do—I don't hesitate to say so—and I should like uncommonly to smash him."
Tennyson shortly afterwards was declared to be deserving of the same fate.
Byron also was a great mistake; Walter Scott, too, was no better, and they ought both of them to be smashed.
Shelley was an impudent pretender, and ought properly to have been smashed long ago. By Jove, he'd do it some day!
It was poor Goldsmith's turn next; but he relented, saying, with a mutilated sigh, he was scarcely worth smashing.
But Milton was "a ponderous take-in—a violent mistake." He was very good for old women, no doubt, but as heavy as cold dumpling; and nothing but sheer starvation could force him down his throat. He wished to Heaven some one would smash him!
Present authors were knocked on the head in the same heavy pavior's-hammer style of criticism. Who was Dickens, pray? only an inventory-taker! What was Bulwer? the hero of sixteen novels! James was a drug—a perfect James's powder: Sheridan Knowles a Fitzball in blank verse! And as for the ladies, they were all—poetesses, novelists, political economists, and generous Newgate visitors—the whole Fry of them, smashed indiscriminately of a heap! We wonder how so many of them have survived.