Excerpt from The Age of Lead: A Satire There exists between a Critic and a Satirist, nearly the degree of difference that lies between a Poacher and a Sportsman. Your Satirist is a professed author, he takes his regular stand with the Genus irritabile, and his subject chances to be men and manners. Your critic, on the contrary, is a mere irregular, a hanger on, a skinner, (with a vengeance) to the noble army of Literary Martyrs. It is as a Satirist that I have depicted, to her Majesty's liege subjects, the lamentable age in which they have the misfortune to exist, and have done my utmost to reform them altogether. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.