I said to his brother, "Why is your brother's
soul still dark against me? It is I who ought to be angry and
unforgiving: for I was in the wrong." In the region which they now
inhabit (for Finis has been set to the volumes of the lives of both
here below), if they take any cognizance of our squabbles, and
tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that
my little error was not of a nature unpardonable. If you have never
committed a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be
heavy. Ha, dilectissimi fratres! It is in regard of sins NOT found
out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and
lugubrious minor key), Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus.
Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not seldom perpetrate,
is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, for
my part, I will offer up a special libera me. This is the sin of
schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young
or old people. Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my
soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker
is the most addicted to preaching. Does he not stop perpetually in
his story and begin to preach to you? When he ought to be engaged with
business, is he not for ever taking the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing
her with some of his cynical sermons? I cry peccavi loudly and heartily.
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