Note 749 — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1.

However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:—'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. 1.