But he did not know the world.

He saw the "great Babel" only "through the loopholes of retreat," and in the columns of his weekly newspaper.

Even during the years, long past, which he spent in the world, his experience had been confined to a small literary circle.

Society was to him an abstraction on which he discoursed like a pulpiteer.

His satiric whip not only has no lash, it is brandished in the air.
No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor; his judgment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by the slightest personal influence.