READER! walk up at once (it will soon be too late)
and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate

A

FABLE FOR CRITICS;

OR, BETTER,

(I like, as a thing that the reader's first fancy may strike,
an old-fashioned title-page,

such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents,)

A GLANCE

AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES

(Mrs. Malaprop's word)

FROM

THE TUB OF DIOGENES;

A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY,

THAT IS,

A SERIES OF JOKES

By A Wonderful Quiz,

who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace,
on the top of the tub.

Set forth in October, the 31st day,
In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway.

ΤΟ

CHARLES F. BRIGGS,

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBEL.

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 't would make no confusion.

For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chancehatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held in my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree), it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.

| the nation, of that special variety whom
the Review and Magazine critics call lofty
and true, and about thirty thousand (this
tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are
termed full of promise and pleasing. The
Public will see by a glance at this sched-
ule, that they cannot expect me to be over-
sedulous about courting them, since it
for boiling my pot.
seems I have got enough fuel made sure of

As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them SEND IN THEIR CARDS, without further DELAY, to my friend G. P. PUTNAM, Esquire, in Broadway, where a LIST will be kept with the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time (that is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme), I will honestly give each his PROPER POSITION, at the rate of ONE AUTHOR to each NEW EDITION. Thus a PREMIUM is offered sufficiently HIGH (as the magazines say when they tell their best lie) to induce bards to CLUB their resources and buy the balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly been run through the mill.

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as One word to such readers (judicious and that goes) in a style that is neither good wise) as read books with something behind verse nor bad prose, and being a person the mere eyes, of whom in the country, whom nobody knows, some people will perhaps, there are two, including myself, say I am rather more free with my readers gentle reader, and you. All the characters than it is becoming to be, that I seem to sketched in this slight jeu d'esprit, though, expect them to wait on my leisure in fol- it may be, they seem, here and there, lowing wherever I wander at pleasure, rather free, and drawn from a somewhat that, in short, I take more than a young too cynical standpoint, are meant to be author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer faithful, for that is the grand point, and way so like Mephistopheles, that the Pub-none but an owl would feel sore at a rub lic will doubt, as they grope through my from a jester who tells you, without any rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub.

them or with them.

SECOND EDITION,

So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of my book is already secured. For there is not a poet through- A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE out the whole land but will purchase a copy or two out of hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing his betters cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards in

though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing to