Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804 – 1845)
English poet, essayist and journalist.
There is an instinct that leads a listener to be very sparing of credence when a fact is communicated; it doesn't ring well in his ears—it has too much or too little gloss; he receives it with a shrug, and passes it on with a huge notch in it to show how justly it is entitled to suspicion; he is not to be imposed upon by a piece of truth. But give him a fable fresh from the mint of the Mendacity Society—an on dit of the first water—and he will not only make affidavit of its truth, but will call any man out who ventures to dispute its authenticity.
He never wrote up to the full mark of his powers; the fountain never rose to the level of its source. But in our day the professional man of letters is compelled to draw too frequently, and by too small disbursements, upon his capital, to allow large and profitable investments of the stock of mind and idea, with which he commences his career. The number and variety of our periodicals have tended to results which benefit the pecuniary interests of the author, to the prejudice of his substantial fame. ...There is a fatal facility in supplying the wants of the week by the rapid striking off a pleasant article, which interferes with the steady progress, even with the mature conception of an elaborate work
The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.
Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation.
Rumors confirm themselves when duly circulated.