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PSEUDO-CRITICS.
A certain set of individuals calling themselves critics have attacked Lavengro with much virulence and malice.

If what they call criticism had been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say.

The book contains plenty of blemishes, some of them, by-the-bye, wilful ones, as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been detected and pointed out; but the best passages in the book, indeed whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed with abuse and misrepresentation.

The duty of the true critic is to play the part of a leech, and not of a viper.