Repeatedly they have suggested to me,
that perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, and forming one
element in the general gaiety of the conception, went too far. I am not
myself of that opinion; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, that
it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this _bagatelle_ to
graze the brink of horror, and of all that would in actual realization be
most repulsive. The very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by
suggesting to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the entire
speculation, furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from the
horror which might else gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such
objectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for turning to account
the supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms, which, in those days,
both at Dublin and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, by
cooking and eating them. This was an extravaganza, though really bolder
and more coarsely practical than mine, which did not provoke any
reproaches even to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church; its own
monstrosity was its excuse; mere extravagance was felt to license and
accredit the little _jeu d'esprit_, precisely as the blank impossibilities
of Lilliput, of Laputa, of the Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If,
therefore, any man thinks it worth his while to tilt against so mere a
foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture on the aesthetics of murder, I
shelter myself for the moment under the Telamonian shield of the Dean.
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