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I have felt the force of that truism also in my experience. Like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, I was a prominent mark for the poisoned arrows of “small men.” I was ridiculed in print, and being resolved to teach my calumniator a lesson, I sat down and wrote the following letter on the subject:—“Love Villa, &c., &c. My Dear Sir,—Did you ever read of the Frog which tried to swell itself out to the proportions of an Ox? if you did, you will, no doubt, remember the awful catastrophe which befel the ambitious little Frog. You must have heard too the maxim “they who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” And from your classical knowledge you will be familiar with the story of Achilles, who when a very little boy, was dipped in the Styx, to make him invulnerable. You recollect that his mother held him by the heel when dipping him, which was not touched by the miraculous water, and the consequence was that he was vulnerable in that part. Can you make the application? You are a young man, and may, like the Trojan hero, have a vulnerable part. Beware then how you write in future regarding public men like me, or in fact regarding anybody, lest you get your own corns tramped on.” I am, yours very truly.” I submitted the letter to a friend of mine for his opinion. He said it was too soft, and advised me not to send it but, at once, to raise an action of damages against my traducers, as a warning, and to teach them and others publicly that I was a man not to be trifled with. The action was raised, and the world knows the result. I vindicated my position and my honour—proved that I was the “Comyn man,” and at the same time settled the question after-
