?umu$ uittf) Ins utjor tip ' 
 
 OR THE 
 
 REAL AUTHOR OF THE LETTERS 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THAT SIGNATURE 
 
 NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 
 UNVEILED AND REVEALED TO THE .WORLD, 
 
 IN' 
 
 TWO LETTERS 
 
 TO MY COUZIN IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 FROM 
 
 CEDIPUS ORONOKO, 
 
 TOBACCONIST AND SNUFF-SELLER. 
 
 I am weary of conjectures : THIS MUST END THEM ! 
 
 Addison's Cato. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 PRINTED BY W. BAXTER, 
 
 FOR J. VINCENT, NEAR BRASENOSt COLLEGE : 
 
 SOLD ALSO BY SHERWOOD, NEELY, AND JONES, PATERNOSTER-ROW 
 
 AND J. HATCHARD, PICCADILLY, LONDON'. 
 
 1819. 
 

 Ht4RY 
 
 ' 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 I CAN sympathize with all my heart in 
 the sorrows which are poured forth, with 
 such beauty of playful rhetoric, by that 
 massy ingot of erudition that gorgeous 
 embroiderer of w/foz-Clarendonian pe- 
 riods that huzzar in disputation, and 
 " most tremendous companion 5 "," DOCTOR 
 
 * The following little anecdote, I think, illustrates, in 
 a very engaging manner, the union of simplicity with 
 wit. It is copied out of a letter to me from a late very 
 singularly gifted man, distinguished for genius, elo- 
 quence, learning, and wit; and whose condescending 
 kindness and truly affectionate friendship towards me 
 will never be torn from my heart, " but with those 
 holds which grapple it to life." He told me that he 
 had it himself from the lips of Garrick, who was fond of 
 relating it, in the circle of his friends, as a good-hu- 
 moured fling at his brother's cowardice : " George 
 Garrick saw Johnson first and last one day in the par- 
 lour of his brother David. He said not a word, but 
 
IV 
 
 PARR, when he laments, at the close of his 
 preface to the Foxiana, " the grisly and 
 multitudinous group of errata b ," which 
 disfigures his work, occasioned by hete- 
 ropticism as well as by cakography c , in 
 his two-fold character, as drawn by him- 
 
 looked at him even as a man would look at an elephant 
 or a lion well secured. When Samuel had growled 
 himself away, and rolled off, like a seal, from the door ; 
 Well, George, quoth David, what do you think of 
 this luminary ? Upon my word, said he, looking still 
 half afraid, and with his eye to the door upon my 
 word, the gentleman seems to be one of the MOST TRE- 
 MENDOUS COMPANIONS I ever knew." 
 
 b In these words, doth the erudite and eloquent 
 Doctor most amusingly paraphrase and aggrandize what 
 ordinary persons would have called, in an ordinary way, 
 errors of the press. See Pref. to Phil. Varv. pag. x. 
 
 c " He [Doctor Parr] sometimes wished that it had 
 been his own lot to aspire to the calligraphy of the Anti- 
 quarii, &c." Ibid, page ix. By the way, I never see 
 the Doctor in the full-blown honours of his burley and 
 snow-capped wig, but I am forcibly reminded of the curiosa 
 felidtas in the expression of an ingenious Frenchman, 
 who, like our own Pennant, detested a peruke for its 
 falseness, and told me that he always considered it a 
 mensonge orgueilleux ! 
 
self in the same place, of "a clumsy 
 scrawler," and " a dim-eyed corrector." 
 Still more closely does the cause of my 
 sorrow approach his own, in that I have 
 been necessitated, like him, to send my 
 MS. to the printer in loose sheets and 
 from the country. Living, therefore, as 
 I do, at Nicotium Hermitage, in a state of 
 absolute seclusion from the world, though 
 with all the Attic dignity of a retired cit d , 
 and fettered, as I am, [for the Baccha- 
 nalian sins of earlier years,] by the gout 
 in both feet, I have been disabled from 
 making so punctilious a revision of proof- 
 sheets as I could have wished ; and, on 
 that account, must crave the indulgence 
 of my readers, in behalf of any such 
 failures as may deform my publication. 
 Some few years ago, and before marriage, 
 I had the happiness of corresponding with 
 a lady of Switzerland, who, though a per- 
 fect adept in Greek, and deep to the chin 
 
 " d Qui se repose," as Monsieur Dutens somewhat 
 lackadaisically expresses himself, in the title page of his 
 very entertaining Memoires d'un voyageur, &c. 
 
VI 
 
 in Chemistry, Geology, Entomology, and 
 all the other indispensable attributes of 
 female education in this exemplary age, 
 was not quite a mistress of Mr. Bull's 
 tongue, and constantly annexed to her 
 letters by way of Postscript, and with ini- 
 mitable candour ;- " Pray put in little 
 words there's a dear, to, from, for, will, 
 shall, &c. where you find 'em wanting." 
 And as I find myself now in a somewhat 
 similar predicament, let me hope that all 
 my readers will kindly adopt, for my benefit, 
 the restorative system prescribed in the 
 P. S. of my female friend. 
 
 " It is the privilege of an Author to avail 
 himself of a preface," says the late excellent 
 Dean Vincent in the Introduction to his 
 Voyage of Nearchus, " in order to procure 
 favour and to anticipate objections/' With 
 a view to profit myself by the application 
 of this fair principle, I was about to pro- 
 pitiate, if I could, by a low bow of respect, 
 and in the beseeching attitude of a super- 
 annuated worm, those unsparing despots 
 THE PERIODICAL CRITICS, and to soften 
 
VII 
 
 the gorgon terrors of their brow ; despots, 
 who sit enthroned " on a pyramid of 
 stones % to throw them at the heads of all 
 those who pass by." But I soon recol- 
 lected that all such endeavours would be 
 unnecessary. Because, if Pope's interdic- 
 tory hint against mangling a butterfly on 
 the wheel, holds any influence over their 
 iron hearts, it must, & fortiori, operate in 
 favour of such a grub as myself; for, as 
 Johnson well observes in one of his Ram- 
 blers ; " since dignity of character is always 
 a panoply, so insignificance is always a 
 shelter." And even if, after all, I should 
 remain unread, or neglected, or, worse 
 than either, be reviewed, and, of course, 
 " chopped into messes," as Shakespeare 
 says, I shall wrap myself up in that mantle 
 of self-love which clings, like the tunic of 
 
 * Mr. Malone, in one of his notes on Shakespeare, 
 enthrones Warburton on this pyramid of stones ; and 
 represents him as a tyrant in his command over the 
 missiles around him, in his character of Critic and Com- 
 mentator upon the works of Pope and of the Bard of 
 Avon. 
 
Vlll 
 
 Nessus, to our nature, and forsakes not the 
 most abject and forlorn ; seeking, at the 
 same time, refreshment and consolation 
 from the good-humoured philosophy folded 
 up in the following words : " Tout travail 
 merite un salaire; or le salaire d'un bon 
 fecrivain est dans les applaudissemens pub- 
 lics qu'il recoit. Mais le salaire manquant 
 au m6chant ecrivain, il est juste qu'il trouve 
 le sien dans les applaudissemens qu'il se 
 donne & lui meme. C'est ainsi que la Na- 
 ture a permis que les grenouilles trouvassent 
 du plaisir dans leur chants." P. GARASSE. 
 
LETTER I. 
 
 HlC VIR, Hie EST, tibi quern promitti sepias audis ! 
 
 JEN. lib. vi~v. 792. 
 
 MY DEAR TOM; 
 
 TV HAT a bewitching and irre- 
 sistible creature is flattery ! It is like that pre- 
 cious ointment that ran down the patriarch's 
 beard, and is descended, by lineal devolution, 
 from Hermon's dew. It is the turnpike to 
 every heart in the world. Every moralist 
 wraps himself up in defiance of its fascination, 
 and the porter even of Taste flaps the door in 
 its face, as if it were a poet, a younger brother, 
 or a country couzin ; but it creeps up the back 
 stairs, and finds its way to the bosoms of the 
 best. The ladies who are the nectar and 
 ambrosia of this life ; and for whom [more 
 especially when their stockings are a little blue~\ 
 I cherish a homage that borders on idolatry, 
 can feed, and even grow fat upon this delicious 
 inanity ; and thus does it equally melt pru- 
 dery in her boudoir, and the hermit in his 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 cave. Addison, I think, says, that, for a soli- 
 tary man, he was happier in his depth of 
 seclusion from the world, if he could see an 
 eye peeping in upon him over the hedge, and 
 could hear the peeper say What a Solitude! 
 The late Lord H. declared to his intimate 
 friend, that if no passengers appeared upon 
 a certain bridge that commanded a Pisgah view 
 of his superb domain, he felt that he had lost 
 a day ! What an admirable parody upon Titus's 
 complaint ! But what must I (who am no 
 Lord and have no superb domain to be jealous 
 of) say, to the praises of your last ? you have 
 stolen the most graceful of Lord Chesterfield's 
 quills, and dipped it in honey instead of ink. 
 " Learned and enlightened tobacconist" " cap- 
 tivating' snuff-seller"" Hesperian fruit of an 
 Oronoko branch-" these are a few, and only 
 a few, of the tickling sophists, which " dance 
 through your letter in all the mazes of compli- 
 mentary confusion a ." The Comte de Grammont 
 said of his brother the Comte de Guiche, que 
 du surplus de T excellent qui itoit en lui, Ton eut 
 compose deux sujets parfaits^ ; and your pane- 
 
 * See Junius to Sir W. Draper, Letter vii. 
 b Mem. torn. ii. 307. But the most hyperbolical of all 
 vanities and the most amusing of all gasconades, is that of a, 
 
gyric upon me reminds one of that preposterous 
 iloge. But what am I to think of it? Is it 
 genuine ? Does it spring from the fresh feelings 
 of the heart, or is it the base and counterfeit 
 currency of an ignoble passion for ridicule and 
 banter? Tell me whether your lip was not 
 curled with ironical scorn, whilst in the very 
 act of pelting me with these roses? Or am I 
 simply to look upon them as a lure for pay- 
 Parisian ballerina, and a personal friend of Napoleon. It 
 leaves the well-known coxcombry of Vestris, who was the 
 self-created Dieu de la Danse, leagues and leagues behind 
 it ; and is besides quite in the spirit of the tigre-singe nation. 
 " Je vais si haul said, he, speaking of his Opera feats oui, 
 Monsieur, veritablement je vais si haul, que je M'ENNUIE en 
 lair r Apropos of Napoleon. I know an incurable punster 
 (so incurable, indeed, that he goes, in the circle of his friends, 
 by the name of Annibal, the Punic hero !) who sent by a 
 light vessel a billet-doux to the Ex- Emperor, when on his 
 St. Helena voyage. Like the person of the " throneless 
 homicide" to whom it was addressed, it was very short, and 
 Couched in these words : 
 
 I, BOKE, qua virtus tua te vocat. OviD. 
 
 But if he had not frittered away his powers by these low 
 arts of punning, which are the tripe and cowheels in the 
 market of wit, he might have sent him a better quotation, 
 and in a more dignified and solemn tone : Le void 
 Illi JUSTITIAM confirmavere triumphi, 
 PRESENT EM docuere DEUBI ! nunc secula discant 
 ISDOMITUM KIHIL ESSE PIO, TUTUMVE JTOCEX*! ! 
 
 CLAUDIAX. 
 B 2 
 
ments in kind ; and are we for the time to come, 
 in our character of correspondents, to emulate 
 Pope and his letter- writing coterie of obse- 
 quious gossips, in their adulation of each other, 
 and their scorn for the rest of the world ; or 
 (to step down one flight of stairs) must we, like 
 the chivalrous Warburton c and his faithful 
 squire d (si par v a licet, fyc. <5"c.) deal only in con- 
 
 c See in the ' ' Letters from a late eminent Prelate to one of 
 his friends," the luscious compliments interchangeably 
 bandied, with the shuttlecock of self-love, by those Lumi- 
 naries not only in the first honeymoon of their friendship, 
 but throughout life. And before such flaming orbs, all co- 
 temporary constellations such as Leland, Jortin, Seeker, 
 Lowth, Johnson, Burke, and Co. contract their fiery arms 
 Et cceli justH plus parte recedunt ! VIRG. GEOIIG. 
 
 d Shamefully called by that dashing but most ingenious 
 and entertaining writer, Mr. D'Israeli, " a polished sycophant," 
 and A jackal echoing the roar of the lion, &c. Quarrels of 
 Authors, vol. i. p. 68. Though I can by no means acquiesce 
 ill the propriety of these sobriquets, yet it seems on all 
 hands to be agreed that this frigid, wary, slow-treading, and 
 most unchivalrous character was little fitted by nature to 
 become the pedissequus of a Croisader in the Theological 
 field, distinguished, more than any other champion there, 
 by the heroism of paradox, and a gladiatorial fierceness 
 against all opponents. Neither can I approve, any more than 
 the author of the P. of L. of the hard knocks inflicted by 
 PARR on his toil worn and passive helmet. They resemble the 
 blows of a giant in the dark strong, but ill-directed. See 
 the genius of Hurd balanced on his " antithetical spear," 
 
tests of compliment and reciprocations of po- 
 lished smartness ? Must we, after the fashion of 
 these luminaries, [who, by the way, became, by 
 their own self creation, monopolizing patentees 
 of the planetary system,] execute indentures duo- 
 partite, which shall promise and covenant for 
 a constant exchange of Epping butter between 
 us ] Oh ! no, my dear Tom ; I will relieve 
 you from the flutter into which you have been 
 thrown by these pressing interrogatories. A 
 
 against that of Warburton, by the very learned and eloquent 
 Editor of the Warburtonian Tracts, pag. 152. PARR, with 
 his accustomed felicity of adaptation, has applied to War- 
 burton, page 149. the words which Longinus uses in de- 
 scribing the character of Timaeus. Will he forgive me for 
 observing that I have transcribed into the fly-leaf of the 
 first vol. of my copy of the Divine Legation, the words used 
 by Eusebius in describing the writings of Philo: ?rXv? y* 
 utv 'fat Ay XMI irhctTvg rettf diowoieci?, v^hog TS KCCI fAiria^ot; IV 
 T<5 fig Tot$ Sttcts y^cx.^ac,g Studious ytytinftwx; , TTCIJCI^V xett TroAwTgaTo* 
 run ttfH Ay<y> -Trt-jcowtti T* vpnyjo-o. Eccl. Hist. lib. ii. 
 cap. 18. But, above all, see and read that opus palmarium of 
 the Quarterly Review, the article in the seventh volume upon 
 the Works of Warburton ; which, for splendor of diction, 
 for a luminous, just, and nicely discriminating taste, for the 
 athletic grasp and comprehension of mind with which the 
 whole subject is grappled and mastered, and, lastly, for the 
 accurate appreciation, as it seems to me, both of Warburton's 
 wonderful powers and his application of them, is above all 
 praise, and deserves to occupy the same shelf of honour with 
 the critical writings of Cicero, Quintilian, and Johnson. 
 
I 
 
 little bird has whispered the truth in mine ear., 
 and imparted the key that unlocks all the 
 secret. You thought of gaining your object 
 surreptitiously you thought that my heart 
 would have yielded to this coup de grace, so 
 skilfully administered, and have been quite 
 thrown off its guard by the " honied globules 6 " 
 which have dribbled from your pen. And, 
 doubtless, the impression of agreeable surprize 
 was the more striking, because the homespun 
 habits of my life had entirely shut me out from 
 the hope of ever being so tickled by the com- 
 plimentary feather. When your favour, with 
 all its holiday terms, arrived, and when it had 
 been read, with the engaging agrimens of nay 
 wife's personal delivery, to a large assemblage 
 of approving friends, the ingenuous blush of 
 modesty mantled to my cheeks, a tide of ecstacy 
 thrilled, with delicious madness, through my 
 veins, and even the tips of my fingers involun- 
 tarily tingled with the conscious crimson ! Be- 
 fore your cup of adulation reached the lip, no 
 breath of praise had ever feasted the ear, or 
 regaled the vanity of your couzin, beyond that 
 conveyed by the cold and sneaking phrase, 
 
 6 Melliii verborum globuli, Petr. Arb. See also P. of L. 
 page 224. 14th Ed. 
 
" He's an honest Tobacconist." And, most as- 
 suredly, this tribute is not of more ample dimen- 
 sions than what is strictly merited by the habits 
 of my life. For although I affect not an inte- 
 grity more rigid than my neighhours, yet I can 
 lay my hand on my heart and swear upon that 
 altar, that I never yet condescended either to 
 soak my shag, nor to adulterate, by a single hand- 
 ful, those " pungent grains of titillating dust f " 
 which it is at once the pride and the pleasure of 
 my life to deal out, in virgin purity, and with an 
 obsequious bend from behind the counter [Hea- 
 ven bless, as they sneeze, and multiply the snuff- 
 takers !] to the welcome solicitations of my 
 customers. But, Tom, I was not born on the 
 first of April; and though you are a cunning 
 dog ; yet (thanks to a little mother wit) you are 
 not too cunning for the sagacity of him whom you 
 thought of entrapping, without a given consent, 
 into the accomplishment of your wishes. With 
 joy and alacrity I should have paid you the 
 homage of a brimming heart, had I not disco- 
 vered that your jewels of praise were counterfeit, 
 and that the jeweller himself was little better 
 than an arrant cheat. The little bird of which I 
 
 f Pope's Rape of the Lock. 
 
8 
 
 spoke has told me of the hubbub that pervades 
 the whole compass of your neighbourhood, in a 
 world of a mile square of the spirit of inqui- 
 sitiveness that has once again been quickened 
 into a strong and bustling activity by the death 
 of Sir Philips, and by the commentaries of the 
 stirring family of Pamphleteers, Reviewers, and 
 Newspaper-editors, upon his claim to those title- 
 deeds of renown, which an unequivocal establish- 
 ment of authenticity as the writer of the LETTERS 
 in question, would immediately confer. It has 
 been blabbed also to me ex adytis, and from no 
 ambiguous oracle, that your coterie of blue-stock- 
 ing belles, with that spirit of enlightened curiosity 
 so proverbially dominant in them, and from 
 which I hope they will never depart, have caught 
 and sped onward this mania for investigation 
 that amongst other tidings blown abroad by the 
 " two trumpets h " of Fame they have caught that 
 rumour which ascribes to me the honour of hav- 
 ing been appointed the sole depositary of a secret 
 that has now, for just half a century, perplexed 
 
 * Sir Philip Francis, K. B. Ultimus Romanorum ; or the 
 last of those who have been identified with JUNIUS, in his 
 Roman signature and apparel. 
 
 h Two trumpets she doth sound at once, 
 But both of clean contrary tones; &c. &c. HUDIBKAS. 
 
9 
 
 the world that in a " pliant hour," as Othello 
 has it, they have patted you on the back, and 
 \vith " candied tongue" encouraged you to send 
 the casket of sugarplumbs now before me, and 
 to catch me, like a trout, under the gills, with 
 a view of wheedling away from my heart's core 
 the mystery that has hitherto dwelt in that in- 
 most sanctuary, in sacred and unuttered seclu- 
 sion. But, Tom ! homo sum humani nihil d, 
 me alienum puto and I freely forgive you this 
 attempt upon the credulity of my self-love ; 
 nay more : for the sake of those enchanting 
 intriguers in the Committee of cerulean hose by 
 whom you are surrounded, and who prompted 
 the application of the probe which you have so 
 gracefully wielded, I will at once acknowledge 
 to you and to them that their surmises upon 
 this teeming subject are no baseless visions 
 that, by a chain of occurrences the most extra- 
 ordinary that the fortuitous concourse of the 
 dancing atoms ever hooked together, it was my 
 fate to catch the dying breath of JUNIUS that 
 his last words bequeathed to me a distinct ac- 
 knowledgment in respect to those LETTERS, con- 
 secrated to immortality by his genius, (and which 
 my wife playfully characterises as embalming 
 
10 
 
 gossamer topics in language of adamant 1 ,) and 
 that my bosom is, accordingly, at this moment, 
 the sole proprietor of that bequest ! It will be a 
 sprig of laurel not unworthy, I would hope, of be- 
 ing worn in the cap of my couzin, if, on the present 
 occasion, I make him the channel of a disclo- 
 sure to the Public, which, 1 am well aware, 
 that Public will receive with open arms, with 
 enthusiasm, and the uplifted eyes of wonder. 
 
 All the world knows, that, while JUNIUS 
 was yet living, or rather was alive in his cor- 
 respondence ; and even from the very moment 
 when, suadente diabolo, he first made his hyaena- 
 spring upon all that was elevated in rank and 
 character, when he threw each particular con- 
 stituent of his Majesty's Administration into a 
 shudder that shot through the blood all the 
 world knows, that the question of authenticity 
 has been intrenched in the deepest secrecy, and 
 that the lynx-eyed vigilance of his immediate ad- 
 versaries superadded to the concentrated curi- 
 osity and sagacious noses of the whole literary 
 Republic, has striven in vain to thread the tan- 
 gled copse and unearth the delinquent. Ever 
 
 1 " His heart [Mr. Fox's] was as soft as a woman's 
 liis language was adamant." MR. GRATTAN. 
 
11 
 
 since the immortal cars et crie after Mr. Alder- 
 man Whittington's cat, there has been no hunt 
 that has required or produced keener sportsmen. 
 During the period in which the Letters were in a 
 course of publication, it is scarcely in the power 
 of language to convey an adequate conception of 
 the intense and eager curiosity that was felt and 
 cherished in regard to the Author of them. Sir Wil- 
 liam Draper, more especially, stung to the quick, 
 and writhing with mental anguish, occasioned, 
 not so much, perhaps, by the nettlewhip of his 
 tyrant's satire, and the knout that fell with such 
 unrelenting severity on the back of the Manilla 
 ransom, as from the discovery [after he himself 
 had thrown down the glove of defiance] of his 
 antagonist's superior prowess in eloquence, in 
 powers of argument and of Attic wit, would have 
 gladly given half his fortune to have found out 
 his hiding place, and to have fought him in 
 another field, where 
 
 The air-drawn dagger, by which thousands bleed k , 
 
 POPE. 
 
 might have been exchanged for more material 
 
 k " It is his impersonality that I complain of, and his in- 
 visible attacks ; for his dagger in the air is only to be re- 
 garded because one cannot see the hand that holds it, &c." 
 Sir W. Draper to Junius, Letter iv. 
 
12 
 
 weapons. But curiosity by no means died on 
 the political and literary death of the satirist ; 
 neither was the inquisitorial spirit with respect 
 to the personal identity of JUNIUS buried in 
 that tomb. Years and ages after he had leased 
 to inflict his burning lashes, and to peal his 
 thunder in the ears of his quailing victims, the 
 hunt was pursued. Without the respite of a 
 twelvemonth's duration, the halloo and gallant 
 hark-away sprung up from every covert ; and 
 challenges upon false scents were made in such 
 numbers that arithmetic at full speed could 
 scarcely overtake them. Although the goal was 
 never reached, yet the chace, for ever animated 
 by the exhilarating thunder of the hounds, was, 
 like the eloquence of the empirical tyrant in his 
 tub 1 , 
 
 Ever ending still beginning. POPE. 
 
 A host of giants, in all the native panoply of 
 their Typhcean strength, headed by Chatham, 
 Burke, and Dunning, and gradually tapering 
 into such comparative pigmies as Hugh Boyd 
 and Dr. Wilmot, have successively been led by 
 
 1 Lord North, in one of his speeches, called JUNIUS " the 
 great boar of the wood who had broke through the toils and 
 foiled all the hunters." See Woodfall's Junius, Prel. Ess. 
 pag. 6. 
 
13 
 
 the misguided zeal of their respective partizan* 
 into the field of competition ; and they have 
 entered it, just as Martial represents Cato to 
 have entered the Roman theatre "ut exirent* 
 Each such pretension has vanished into thin 
 air, and become the shadow of a shade an 
 empty whim, and a fanciful nothing : 
 
 Airy dreams 
 
 Sat for the picture ; and the Author's hand 
 Imparting substance to an empty shade 
 Imposed a gay delirium for a truth. 
 
 COWPER'S TASK, b. iv. 
 
 To none of them, accordingly, has the decision 
 of the public tossed the apple of glory ; yet still 
 the candidates are of Hydra growth, and [as 
 my youngest son suggests in his pedantic way] 
 are cater-couzins of Proserpine's golden bough, 
 of which the Mantuan tells us, that, " uno avulso 
 iion deficit alter m ." Mr. Woodfall in the Pre- 
 liminary Essay of his large and elaborate edi- 
 tion of JUNIUS has jumped cursorily over the 
 whole field of controversy; and has run his 
 sword through many heroes, who up to the hour 
 
 m You will be delighted to learn that this hemistich from 
 the 6th ^Eneid was adopted, at my earnest solicitation, as his 
 family motto, by the late Chevalier Ruspini, the eminent 
 Dentist. 
 
14 
 
 of that publication had maintained a sort of 
 litigated claim to be considered, individually, the 
 authors of his LETTERS. But upon their funeral 
 pile, he erects no edifice of his own. Diruit 
 I cannot add the word cedificat. Never did a 
 conclusion more truly inconclusive proceed from 
 any man in the armour of an accredited name ; 
 and at the close of his lame and most unsa- 
 tisfactory survey, one is tempted to exclaim 
 with Demipho in the play, after the opinion of 
 his three lawyers Incertior sum multo, quam 
 dudum n . 
 
 Some time ago, too, those legitimate children 
 of Procrustes those scorpions in criticism 
 those ruffians with dark lanthorns which con- 
 tain just light enough to shew them the way to 
 murder other people, THE EDINBURGH RE- 
 VIEWERS, joined in full cry the mob of conjec- 
 tures, and lent a crutch to the posthumous 
 claims of Leonidas Glover . But I laughed in 
 my sleeve when 1 read their erring, though self- 
 sufficient assumption ; and proudly hugged the 
 conviction to my heart that by this act of gene- 
 rosity to a dead friend [for it is a cardinal article 
 of their critical creed and oath never to praise 
 
 n Ter. Phormio, act. ii. sc. 3. 
 Ed. Rev. vol. xxii. pag. 483. 
 
15 
 
 the living f] they had added one more to the 
 number of ingenious mistakes upon this prolific 
 speculation, and crippled their own reputation 
 for sagacity by such ludicrous pretension to be 
 considered as the resurrection-men of the de- 
 ceased and eloquent satirist. No changes of 
 the moon, however, were ever more numerous 
 or more inconstant than the vicissitudes of 
 their faith. For after the lapse of only two 
 short years, this diadem of immortality was 
 cast aside ; and discarding the presumptions 
 and probabilities by which their former problem 
 was sustained, they come again into the arena, 
 and put forth all their powers of special plead- 
 ing [that Chinese shoe of the mind] and of so- 
 phistical argumentation, with the view of cloth- 
 ing the name of Sir Philip Francis? with this 
 shifting honour, and of installing him upon 
 that throne, from which, owing to the revolu- 
 tion in their own opinions, Glover was now 
 compelled to abdicate. The veteran Knight 
 startles with unutterable surprise at the laurel 
 crown so officiously provided for his temples 
 
 Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma 
 
 VIRO. GEORG. 
 
 but goes to his grave, I fear, without possessing 
 P Ed. Rev. vol. xxix. pag. 102. et seq. 
 
> Ifi 
 
 magnanimity enough to make a formal abju- 
 ration of all right of proprietorship in these Hue 
 ribbands of literature. Who may be the next elbve 
 or candidate for those ribbands who is next 
 to be introduced to the gaze and astonishment 
 of the community, and to have this amaranth 
 of glory forcibly bound upon his brow by 
 these Gentlemen Ushers of the North, I pre- 
 tend not to determine having no claim to 
 the gift of second sight, which, I am told, is 
 their exclusive monopoly. I will not, how- 
 ever, dissemble from you the susurrated im*- 
 putation [as Johnson would have said] that has 
 gone forth respecting the Editor c i of this work ; 
 
 q My conquest, in the present field, over this Jupiter tonans 
 in the empire of Criticism is a mere bagatelle, and has no 
 merit. But if I had been blessed wilh an Academical educa- 
 tion, and possessed the honour (and such I truly should con- 
 sider it) of a personal acquaintance with the celebrated Pro- 
 vost of Oriel College, Oxford, I would venture upon the 
 freedom of suggesting a motto (though nothing can exceed 
 the cleverness which he himself has displayed in that very 
 subordinate department of the controversy) for the next 
 edition of his THREE most triumphant Replies, in behalf of 
 his own University, to the sophists and calumniators of the 
 Edinburgh Review : 
 
 TERNA ARMA MOVENDA : 
 
 TER letho sternendus erat; cui tune tamen OMN T ES 
 ABSTULIT H;EC ANIMAS DEXTRA, et totidem exuit armis! 
 
 JSnrid. lib, viii. v. 566. 
 
and which ascribes these fanciful theories to a 
 hoaxing vein in him, for the purpose of tickling 
 the public appetite by so strange and novel a 
 whim, and of giving, thereby, fresh wings of 
 circulation to a work, justly depressed in the 
 esteem of the world by its sneers at religion, and 
 its unblushing attachment to the pestilent Ethics 
 of Bentham, Hume, and Co. But whether se- 
 rious or counterfeit, the guesses and surmises of 
 that school upon this aenigma are of no value 
 
 Ibi omnis 
 Effusus labor VIRG. GEORG. 
 
 and such polemics might as profitably employ 
 their time in ploughing the air in shaving an 
 egg in making clothes for fishes or on any 
 other Sisyphean item in the diary of the operosb 
 nihil agens*. To ME then dearest Tom! to 
 ME exclusively and alone is given the absorb- 
 
 * One is surprised to find that Mr. Perry, who, in his own 
 judgment, is himself a bloodhound of unfailing scent in pur- 
 suit of the vermin of imposture, has been driven, inter altos, 
 into a quagmire of error by these Borealia Flamina. The 
 following extract is made from the leading article in his 
 paper on the death of Sir P. Francis : " The article on this 
 subject in the Edinburgh Review seemed to put the question 
 at rest, and all farther public debate about the matter." 
 Mom. Chron. Dec. 25, 1818. 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 ing gratification and high renown of lifting 
 up this hitherto impenetrable veil of political 
 mystery ; and into your bosom shall the prison- 
 house treasure be poured ! But, unhappily, 
 this preliminary flourish has spread itself over 
 so wide a surface, that the key which unlocks 
 the secret must be reserved for a second Letter ; 
 though I am aware that your heart-strings are 
 already quivering on tenter-hooks of suspense, 
 and that you are breathless with impatience 
 for the promised peep 8 . I know your sanguine 
 and ebullient temperament ; and 1 am more 
 than half-afraid lest your spirits, always buoy- 
 
 * See a miniature painting of Junius and a full-length 
 picture of Home Tooke, executed with equal gracefulness, 
 and fidelity to truth, in the Quart. Rev. vol. vii. page 373 ; 
 and communicated, if I am not greatly mistaken, by a gen- 
 tleman not more distinguished by high rank than by ge- 
 nius, eloquence, and the richness of his acquisitions in clas- 
 sical literature, as well as by a generous enthusiasm for ta- 
 lents, learning, and virtue in other men ; and these, let me 
 say, united with political firmness tempered by moderation, 
 and a dignified correctness, and purity of demeanour in pri- 
 vate life, are some of the stoutest bulwarks of preservation, 
 which the Aristocracy of this realm, in these our fearful 
 times, can build around them against the savage, " subter- 
 ranean wind" of a levelling jacobinism, and the " blasts from 
 Hell" of an infidel philosophy: 
 
 Injurioso ne pede proruas 
 
 STANTEM COLUMNAM ! Hon. Od. lib. i. 35. 13. 
 
19 
 
 ant and insubmergible, should be sublimated, 
 under the stimulant now administered, into 
 an unruly joy and a perilous fever of the blood. 
 Allow me therefore, though unadorned by a 
 Diploma, to recommend in your case a pur- 
 suance of that " anti-phlogistic regimen 1 ," which 
 a very eminent quack prescribed to a modern 
 philosopher, in the crisis of his disorder. Don't 
 be shy of febrifuges and jalop. Flinch not 
 from a little cupping and the frequent appli- 
 cation of cantharides to the crown of the head. 
 Let Snowball, the little negro-boy, fan you 
 continually, and ventilate your throbbing tem- 
 ples. Give the lancet no sinecure ; and it will 
 do you no harm if the sanguinivorous leeches 
 also feed heartily at your expence. Let potio 
 purg. quotidti sumend: be the established order 
 of the day, in your Body-Corporate, until the 
 arrival of my next ; and always dine upon 
 barley water. So shall your rampant imagi- 
 nation be tamed, and the blood : feat riots in 
 your veins be sobered ; and in a day; or two, 
 the cup of hope shall reach the lip, ahcl you 
 shall be " lapt in Elysium ." 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. i. p. 26. 
 " Milton's Comus. 
 
 D2 
 
20 
 
 Before making, however, my parting bow on 
 the present occasion, allow me to borrow a 
 hint from the Earl of Chesterfield's favourite 
 principle of apropos de bottes in correspondence 
 with his friends ; and to add a word or two on 
 the subject of our hero, and one of the most 
 distinguished of his adversaries. Burns, whose 
 better judgment was often obscured by the 
 quickness of his feelings, and the magnifying 
 cloud of an indignant anger x , in pourtraying, 
 in one of his letters, the character of a person 
 who had violently offended him, has drawn 
 all the darker features of JUNIUS with as much 
 accuracy as if he had sat for the portrait. " In 
 him," says he, " bigotry, malevolence, envy, self- 
 conceit, were all strongly bound together in a 
 massy frame of brazen impudence. To such 
 a shield humour is the peck of a sparrow, and 
 satire the popgun of a schoolboy ?." But 1 
 have the happiness of corresponding occa- 
 sionally with a most enchanting savante residing 
 in that fairy-land of the gossips, Richmond, who 
 is mistress of many of the oligies and preemi- 
 nently gifted with that fleur <t esprit which is 
 
 if 
 
 Plutarch. 
 Works, vol. v. p. 107. 
 
21 
 
 the mental bloom of the whole sex ; and she 
 always more concisely calls our anonymist 
 the man in the BRAZEN mask; in contradis- 
 tinction to another apocryphal personage, 
 who has baffled, in an almost equal degree, 
 the scrutiny of inquisitive minds. It was 
 Burke, I think, \vho declared in conversation, 
 that his style was " the corrosive sublimate of 
 mercury." Being, however, myself a perfect 
 antediluvian in my passion for simplicity, I 
 prefer the unvarnished and more intelligible 
 terms by which that " unfrocked Grammarian," 
 and [pace 2 Burdettiand f] lineal descend ant from 
 the Gracchi, the late Mr. Home Tooke, de- 
 scribed this terrible champion, as " a skulking 
 assassin, who shot his arrows out of the windows 
 in the dark a ." Of all the perplexities contrived 
 by the riddle-makers in this controversy, not 
 one has been more amusing and fantastic than 
 that which has ascribed the letters of JUNIUS 
 to Mr. Tooke. To say nothing of the heavy 
 
 1 Sir Francis must forgive me, if I say of him, and of all 
 the plusqu&m- perfect! of Patriotism, that they are counter- 
 parts of the Tribunes at Rome, as described by the Histo- 
 rian. Fer'e semper reguntur a multitudine magis quam regunt. 
 Liv. lib. iv. 71. 
 
 * See his second letter to Junius. 
 
22 
 
 impeachment conveyed by such an hypothesis 
 against his moral character; all suspicion of 
 such a nature must surely be disarmed, when one 
 recollects that [to mention only one amid seve- 
 ral considerations which occur on the same side 
 of the question,] although to an inimitable ease 
 [coulant de source, as the French well express it] 
 in his style of writing, he added shrewdness of 
 observation, promptitude, subtlety, adroitness, 
 and a greatpower of sarcasm ; yet you will be un- 
 able to find, in any one of his compositions, the 
 austere graces, the brilliant and embroidered pe- 
 riods, the elaborate elegance and trim pro- 
 priety which characterize the pen of JuNius b . 
 But as you doat upon an anecdote, I will quit 
 these threadbare generalities, and try to tickle 
 
 b I cannot, however, in my estimate of the powers of Junius, 
 carry him to that pinnacle of renown upon which he has 
 been placed by the Author of the P. of L. who considers him 
 as " a legitimate English classic/' and the equal of Tacitus 
 and Livy, p. lip. To account for this exorbitant tloge, it 
 may be natural, perhaps, and a sort of professional duty, for 
 one biting satirist to cherish and extol the operations of a 
 brother in the same trade ; just as, upon something like the 
 same principle of attachment, the Commentaries and Cam- 
 paigns of Caesar were elevated into the honour of becoming 
 the exclusive study of the celebrated Cond : Les campe- 
 ments de Ce*sar firent son e*tude. Orai. Fun. par Hossuct. 
 
23 
 
 you with something a little more specific. In 
 the spring of 1803, in company with two of my 
 friends, I paid a visit to this philosopher and 
 politician at his Wimbleton Tusculum. On 
 our introduction, he was reading an Italian 
 work he wore a red nightcap on his head 
 his lower extremities were muffled in flannel; 
 and during the whole of our stay, he fed his 
 nose with pinches of snuff huge and frequent. 
 He received us with open arms, and put us 
 immediately at our ease. I thought him at 
 all points of companionable entertainment 
 most delightful. His eye was eloquent and 
 very animated; and (though I little expected 
 to find it so) I thought that his countenance 
 wore an aspect not only of cheerful benevolence, 
 but of calmness and retirement. We were all 
 unanimous in admiring the social lustre of his 
 mind ; and the frankness, vivacity, and graceful 
 good humour of his manners. He answered 
 all our questions (and they were not a few) 
 with the most kindhearted readiness ; and with 
 equal promptitude entertained us by several 
 anecdotes relative to the eminent characters 
 with whom he had been connected in life 
 particularly Lord Thurlow, Fox, Parr, Godwin; 
 and his immediate neighbour at Wimbleton, 
 
24 
 
 the late Viscount Melville. 1 will make you a 
 present of two of his little stories ; and you 
 shall have them very nearly in the words 
 which he himself made use of; for on the day 
 after my return from his house, I made in my 
 diary a pretty copious memorandum of our visit, 
 and with as much accuracy as a memory, not 
 remarkable for its tenaciousness, would permit. 
 The one, I think, serves to illustrate in his 
 demeanour a perfect self-controul and mastery 
 over the angry passions, under circumstances 
 of much provocation ; the other is a specimen 
 of that terrible strength in sarcastic retort with 
 which he was so signally gifted. It also sets 
 forth the deeply-rooted dislike [of which, 
 indeed, we had many other proofs, in the course 
 of his conversation] which he cherished against 
 the person and character of Mr. Sheridan. 
 
 Anecdote the first. 
 
 Mr. Tooketold US, that the Savjxa SavpaforaTOV Of 
 
 the literary world, the late professor Porson, 
 had used to be a frequent visitor at Wimbleton. 
 ** But for some few years last past, said he, 
 1 have had no intercourse with him. The 
 last visit he paid me was a most extraordinary 
 one. It was a dinner party; and, surrounded 
 
25 
 
 by my friends, I sat at the head of the table; 
 Porson was amongst the number; and was, 
 as usual, very chatty, pleasant, and goodhu- 
 moured, until a certain period of the evening, 
 when he committed the most abominable out- 
 rage that hospitality ever felt. He had shewn 
 no soreness or displeasure whatever at the topics 
 in conversation ; when, impelled by some mo- 
 tive I could never explain, he on a sudden rose 
 from his seat, and, holding his glass in his hand, 
 addressed me in these words" I will give you, 
 Sir, in a bumper toast, the health of the most 
 detestable character in the whole world John 
 Home Tooke !" At this time he was flushed 
 with wine, though his senses were by no means 
 overset by it. My friends and myself expos- 
 tulated with him on the indecency of his be- 
 haviour, with all possible good temper and com- 
 placency. But in vain. He pursued a strain 
 of the most vulgar abuse and invective against 
 my principles and conduct in political life. 
 I teazed him a little by my rapier in reply but 
 kept myself quite cool in temper, and steadily 
 on my guard. He still went on adding gross- 
 ness to grossness, and scurrility to scurrility. I 
 then went round to the chair in which he was 
 sitting, and desired him to feel the muscles of 
 
 E 
 
26 
 
 my right arm. He felt them. 1 then drew up 
 my leg, and desired him to feel and discover, 
 if he could, whether that had any muscular 
 energy. He did so. " Now, Sir, said I, you 
 find that I can both strike and kick; and if 
 you do not hold your tongue, I will first knock 
 you down, and afterwards kick you out of my 
 house." This menace silenced him ; but he 
 still kept his seat, drank a great deal more 
 wine, became very drunk, and was finally 
 packed up, late at night, in a post-chaise, and 
 driven home to his lodgings in Town. From 
 that time to this, I have never seen him c ." 
 
 c If a Tobacconist might be permitted to assume for one 
 moment a grave and didactic air, I would say a word or 
 two, by way of apology, for introducing this anecdote to the 
 public eye. I am no friend to the indulgence of uncharitable 
 feelings with respect to the illustrious dead. I have no de- 
 sire whatever to fledge the arrows of a malignant slander 
 against their memories and their well-earned reputation. On 
 the other hand, I admire as much as any one can do, Mr. 
 Kidd's spirited vindication of his friend, (a vindication, that 
 confers honour on the generous and grateful feelings of his 
 heart,) against the too indiscriminate rebukes of a female 
 writer; whose astonishing talents, combined with the most 
 unaffected and elevated piety, deservedly impart great influ- 
 ence to her decisions. In behalf of ALL her writings, in my 
 humble judgment, " an angel might have given the imprima- 
 tur;" as Mrs. Montague beautifully said with reference to 
 that lump of wisdom, Rasselas. Any anecdote, however, that 
 
27 
 
 Anecdote the second* 
 
 " Shortly, said Mr. Tooke, after I had pub- 
 lished my Two pair of Portraits, ofttvo Fathers 
 
 illustrates the debasement and derision which PorsoR drew 
 around his character by his shocking addiction to excessive 
 drinking is not without its value, as a warning voice. With- 
 out stopping to determine whether his peculiar genius ought 
 to be considered the first and proudest of intellectual supre- 
 macies ; yet, unquestionably we beheld in him a prodigy of 
 uch parts, that his claims to be considered as a most 
 consummate Critic and Scholar were built, in the unanimous 
 opinion, not of his countrymen only, but of every kindred 
 spirit throughout Europe, on a rock of adamant, and de- 
 fied all competition ; and he was therefore, on this account, 
 both qualified and privileged to be at once the ornament 
 and instructor of every well educated circle. Yet it is 
 painful and humiliating to think, that, to' such a depth was 
 he plunged in his besetting sin, and so frequent as well as 
 offensive were the outrages into which it conducted him, 
 that he was altogether excommunicated from the society of 
 numerous gentlemen and scholars, who, under other circum- 
 stances, would have rejoiced in the diffusion of his mind : 
 and even in more tolerant circles, and where the ban of in- 
 terdiction had not gone forth against him, after a certain 
 period of the evening, he was sometimes held to be a 
 nuisance, and sometimes turned into a laughing-stock and 
 a football of contempt. It is matter both of sorrow and 
 surprise with me, that the friends and panegyrists of Mr. 
 Person should not have expressed a deeper feeling of regret 
 and of displeasure at this deplorable anomaly in his character. 
 Mr. Kidd's gentle notice of these systematic habits of 
 drunkenness is conveyed in the following words : " He had 
 " one failing, but he was so great a man that I shall soon 
 
 E2 
 
28 
 
 arid two Sons, I met Sheridan, who said to 
 me with a saucy, satirical air, " So ! Sir, you 
 
 " forget what it was/' Preface to Tracts, &c. by the late 
 Richard Person , Esq. p. xxviii. The spots on the sun's disk, 
 no doubt, should be hidden and lost in the glory of his 
 beams; but should we not close the pit of error whenever 
 we are able to do so ? especially where there is the influence 
 of so powerful an example to beckon the unwary into it. 
 Nothing therefore, I think, can be more mistaken, and 
 generally speaking more mischievous, than to employ the 
 coarse whitewashing brush of adulation instead of the dis- 
 criminating pencil of truth in the portraiture of any cha- 
 racters of high renown, and of influence as exemplars for 
 the formation of rising minds. The faults of such men 
 should be distinctly marked, and an emphatic seal of repro- 
 bation set upon them. Neither should the consideration of 
 great intellectual gifts, and classical attainments intercede 
 to soften the rebuke $ because, in truth, they aggravate the 
 delinquency. "A SCHOLAR OUGHT TO BE A GENTLEMAN $ HE 
 
 OUGHT TO HAVE HIS MANNERS AND HIS DISPOSITION HU- 
 MANIZED BY THE STUDIES IN WHICH HE IS ENGAGED, &C." 
 
 See Dr. Butler's Letter to Mr. Blomfield, p. 55. Above all, 
 it should be shewn that their vices have no sort of necessary 
 connection with their merits j and that they are the diseased 
 excrescences and not the genuine and healthy fruit of the 
 tree. For want of this moral discernment, many a scatter- 
 brained nincompoop, " blazing out his youth and his health 
 [as Johnson says of Rochester] in lavish voluptuousness" 
 many a sauntering doll in Bond Street, bankrupt in intellect, 
 and filling up, in his talk, every vacuity of sense with an oath, 
 has fancied himself more than half a Charles Fox, because 
 he has duly endeavoured, and succeeded in that endeavour, 
 to imitate his prototype in his gambling and other irregulari- 
 
29 
 
 are the Reverend gentleman, I am told, who 
 sometimes amuses himself in drawing portraits," 
 " Yes, Sir! I am that gentleman ; and if you 
 will do me the favour of sitting to me for yours, 
 I will take it so faithfully, that even you your- 
 self shall shudder at it!" 
 
 And now, my dear Tom, good-night, and 
 fare thee well. Mrs. Oronoko desires her com- 
 pliments, and a kiss of affectionate remembrance 
 to the little olive-branches of your domestic 
 fireside : 
 
 To all and each a fair good-night, 
 And rosy dreams and slumbers light ! 
 
 WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Ever most faithfully 
 
 and affectionately yours, 
 
 CE. O. 
 
 ties. The same also in regard to Person ; as a spirited living 
 Poet has well expressed it : 
 
 The fool uncombed and washed but once a week, 
 Thinks Person's lice can give him Person's Greek. 
 
 HODGSOW. 
 
 [Many of my readers, perhaps, will think that this note, 
 like the nettles on the Monk's tomb in Sterne, should be 
 " brushed away," and has ' ( no business here." And I ought 
 to add, that apart of it was contributed by me to a periodical 
 publication a few years ago.] 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 HIDE YOUR DIMINISHED HEADS ! * * * * 
 
 THE SUN is OUT ! 
 
 Milton. 
 
 MY DEAR TOM ; 
 
 MY pen is a romp so wanton and 
 capricious, that I often strive hard to put the 
 curb on her eccentricities, and to tame, quakerize, 
 and harmoniously adjust the expression of my 
 thoughts ; but the hoyden will for ever run out 
 into harlequinade, and emulate the vagrancies 
 of the truant schoolboy, in his ramble after a 
 bird's nest. On the present occasion, however, 
 I shall pursue my object with an undeviating 
 step, and jump at once " in medias res" I have 
 heard with frantic delight of the eager curiosity 
 excited by my avant Courier, especially in the 
 breasts of that a coterie scientifique in the para- 
 
 a A Sappho of the sisterhood, " herisse*e partout de Grec," 
 [Boileau,] and who was at once " la plus savante des belles 
 " et la plus belle des savantes" which is Madame de Genlis' 
 picture of the Duchesse d'Estampes[Derinnuencedes femmes 
 
32 
 
 dise of whose smiles you delight to bask. 
 Many of them, I am covertly told, are over 
 head and ears in Cupid's bucket with me al- 
 ready, and lament, with tears in their eyes and 
 water in their mouths, that I am a Benedict 
 beyond redemption ! I dare not, however, even 
 whisper this flattering secret of female fondness 
 to Mrs. Oronoko, who exercises, as every wife 
 ought to exercise, a lofty prerogative, and an 
 eye of terrifying exactions in her own house ; 
 where, indeed, I cannot consider myself as any 
 thing more than a mere lodger, and a most 
 exemplary Jerry Sneak in servility of resignation 
 to her omnipotent controul b . No conjugal 
 carte and tierce is ever heard under this roof; 
 my angel for the most part issuing her words 
 of command in a voice that emulates in har- 
 mony the music of the spheres, and turns 
 obedience into a blessing ; though, sometimes^ 
 I admit, it is a little more loud and thrasonical 
 than becometh the JEolian breathings of a 
 
 &c.] once asked Doctor George of Eton, how he liked her 
 Latin verses? ff Madam/' replied Orbilius, " I should have 
 * f whipped you for 'em !" 
 
 b " Ring the bells for the wedding," said I, exuberant in 
 joy, and half- bewildered by love, immediately after the nup- 
 tial knot had been tied: '* Rather wring your hands!" re* 
 plied my cynical friend. 
 
33 
 
 female voice 6 . I am often compelled to think 
 of the good and affectionate little creature 
 who married a monster from BROBDI^JAG 
 of herculean strength and colossal stature. 
 Women, we have been told, are born to smooth 
 our cares, as well as our linen ; but her temper 
 is the concentrated essence of malice d , and her 
 
 c I once thought that Hymen had been a recruiting-officer, 
 universally popular j but never shall I forget the satyrical 
 squib that was popped into my key hole, the day after my 
 marriage, by a malicious wit and a brother Tobacconist: 
 Here it is ; 
 
 L'Hymen parut un jour a la eour de Cythere, 
 
 On le hua ; 
 
 Mais le Dieu courrouce" saisit I'amour son frere, 
 Et le tua ! 
 
 d The reason assigned by M. Desmahis (under the Ar- 
 ticle Femme, and contributed by him to the Encyclopedic) 
 for the existence of a spirit of female vindictiveness and 
 cruelty is very ingenious, but I am sorry to add, rather un- 
 gallant : " Les femmes sont vindicatives. Les plus foibles, 
 " les plus simples, et les plus timides doivent fctre cruels : 
 " c'est la loi gnrale de la Nature, qui dans tous les &tres 
 " sensibles proportion ne le ressentiment au danger." I 
 never dare mention the name of this Author in the presence 
 of Mrs. Oronoko. Yet, though I almost worship the Assem- 
 blies of petticoat philosophy, he has given us a picture of 
 them so prettily satyrical, that I could not help getting it by 
 heart : 
 
 Ces petits aropages 
 
 Ou Ton voit pre"sider quelque antique beaute!, 
 
 Qui, rassemblant de petits personnages, 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 nails are of inordinate length. I have heard 
 her even before company, and when dispensing 
 the honours of the table in her own house, 
 oftentimes call him, in a most sneering and 
 satyrical vein ; the humming bird of human 
 nature the page and train-bearer upon Court 
 and Gala days to the pug-dog and guinea-pig 
 families -and an octodecimo edition of the Dun- 
 dad. I have seen her swing him in the air, 
 and balance him in her arm with greater faci- 
 lity than that with which Kemble, as Rolla, 
 used to balance the child in Pizarro. At 
 other times, in a- hurricane of passion and by 
 the ministry of a most masculine fist, she 
 would launch forth the most sinewy of arms, 
 and floor him, a Tamiable, by an ictus fulmineus, 
 that might well have added another laurel to 
 the Olympic chaplet of MENDOZA. More than 
 this : for with that spirit of injustice which 
 brings to one's mind the judicial throne of 
 Rhadamanthus e and the inverted system of his 
 executive, she habitually inflicts the blow with- 
 
 Recuillant de petits suffrages, 
 Et s'appesantissant sur de petits ouvrages, 
 Croit dieter les arr6ts de la post^rite" ! 
 
 (Euv. DIVERS, p. 136. 
 
 e Castigatque auditque dolos, &c. JEtt*. vi. v. 567. 
 
35 
 
 out any previous expostulation, any judgment 
 assigned, or verdict awarded ; though some- 
 times, indeed, when her arm is fatigued, and 
 her nails a little blunted by exercise, the reason 
 why, or plea of justification, [like a little salt- 
 petre, after the halberts, upon a galled and 
 wincing back,] very condescendingly attempts 
 to limp in at the tail of the discipline, and with 
 a very animated tongue for its interpreter. By 
 way, also, of recompence for his misdirected 
 goodnature in rescuing her from the bleak and 
 Decemberly state of widowhood, she wrote the 
 following Epithalamium upon that event, and 
 circulated it, with a most malicious industry 
 and with wings of lightning, throughout the 
 neighbourhood : 
 
 I have a little husband no bigger than my thumb, 
 
 I stuck him in the mustard pot and there I bade him 
 drum; 
 
 I've bought him a little handkerchief to wipe his 
 little nose, 
 
 And a pair of little garters to tie his little hose ; 
 
 Should there come a battle-storm, I'll send him to 
 the field, 
 
 With a needle for his dagger-blade and a thimble for 
 his shield ; 
 
 Should they catch him in a mousetrap, they'll whip 
 
 him o'er the knee, 
 
 F2 
 
36 
 
 Or crack him 'twixt their thumb nails, just as you 
 
 crack a flea ; 
 Or chould they chance to roast the shrimp, [oh ! 
 
 terrible mishap 1] 
 They'll find him not a stomach-full, he would but 
 
 make a snap ; 
 But should he not be caught or crack'd, then let him 
 
 sue some silly slut, 
 And he shall be the pigmy King and she the Queen 
 
 Of LlLLIPUT g l 
 
 Some years ago I purchased and brought 
 home a poem, entitled Trinculo's Trip to the 
 Jubilee and read it aloud (as my custom is) to 
 Mrs. Oronoko. All went on very smoothly 
 until I came to the following passage : 
 
 Oh ! the " ear-piercing fife/' 
 And the ear-piercing wife ! 
 
 I was just beginning to stop for the purpose of 
 making an indignant comment upon this shame- 
 fully lampooning couplet. But Mrs. Oronoko 
 was beforehand with me. She jumped up 
 
 * I am quite sure, that it could not have been more than 
 three months after his marriage, when this most amiable, 
 and Socratically tolerant husband, received in a letter dated 
 CAPE HORN, the following flagitious parody: 
 
 Heu ! miserande puer, si qua, fata aspera rumpas, 
 Tu CORNUTUS eris ! 
 
 , lib. vi. 
 
37 
 
 from her chair, or rather from her lair, with a 
 tyger's leap, and in a high gale of wind snatched 
 the volume out of my hand and instantly 
 committed it to the custody of that safest of all 
 Critics, Vulcan. 
 
 But these vixen pets and feuds of temper 
 are mere April showers, and sunshine imme- 
 diately ensues. No sooner do they blow over 
 than I drink a caudle-cup of Lethe to all that 
 has passed, and am generous enough to depre- 
 cate an eye on the back of the head. In spite, 
 therefore, of my Xantippe's prudery and her eye 
 of jealous vigilance over innocent attentions to 
 other ladies, it is a determination, which as 
 Benedict says, " lire shall not melt out of me" 
 not to suffer these lovely enthusiasts of my pen 
 to gasp one moment longer with the thirst of 
 Tantalus ; and I have accordingly resolved, 
 that neither blackberries on one side of the 
 road, nor hazel nuts on the other, shall have 
 power to fascinate me from the direct line of 
 march which I now proceed to traverse with 
 the rectilinear precision of a steeple hunter. 
 
 Some few years ago, when I fulfilled the 
 duties of Gentleman Traveller, or, (as I have 
 heard this shop-errant character unhandsomely 
 lampooned on the north of the Tweed,) spread- 
 
38 
 
 eagle-man, to the firm in which I have now the 
 honour to be a sleeping partner, my circuit of 
 orders led me into a small town on the coast of 
 Hampshire. I observed with horror that the 
 landlord of my favourite inn, instead of those 
 rosy gills and that paradise of smiles which were 
 wont to animate his congratulations upon my 
 arrival, wore a countenance that was a fiddle 
 in point of longitude, and the fac simile of a 
 peeled orange, or of a delicately boiled chicken, 
 in the sickly paleness of its complexion ; and 
 in reality this exterior but too accurately pour- 
 trayed the mourning of his heart. He told me 
 in a voice interrupted by sobs and convulsions 
 of sorrow, that an elderly gentleman was upon 
 his death-bed in the housethat his agonizing 
 condition was embittered by the absence of all 
 his friendsthat he was laden with a heavy 
 secret of the soul, and panted to unbosom 
 himself thatbut I precipitately checked his 
 tragic generalities, and, as I always, dearest 
 Tom, [to repeat it once again,] wear Terence's 
 prescription for benevolence, conveyed in that 
 immortal line, Humani nil a me alienum puto, 
 as a bandage round my heart, I rushed instinc- 
 tively, under the wing of Boniface, into the sick 
 man's chamber. Death seemed armed de pie 
 
39 
 
 en cap, and to frown upon us with triumphant 
 pride as we entered ; for one entire moiety of 
 the room was crowded with all those imple- 
 ments and apparatus of the apothecary, which 
 may well be called unerring sharpshooters of 
 the grim tyrant, and this forlorn hope was 
 headed in funeral procession by the pestle and 
 mortar, the music of which I always consider 
 as a prologue to the passing bell h . With tiptoe 
 
 h Each shakes his loaded noddle with the other, 
 And brother gravely smells his cane with brother. 
 
 Battle of the Wigs, part ii. 1768. 
 
 I have the pleasure of knowing an eminent Apothecary 
 who is bringing up his eldest son to his own profession, but, 
 with a discreet forecast, as he ingenuously acknowledges and 
 expresses it, of the close union that always must subsist be- 
 tween the two trades, he has bound his youngest boy appren- 
 tice to an Undertaker. My nephew, too, who has just been 
 squirted through the little go at the University of Oxford, and 
 has now a little time at command for correspondence with his 
 near relations, writes me word of a silly sarcasm current 
 amongst the undergraduates there, with whom it is a point 
 in comic discussion, whether more deaths have been occasioned 
 in the world by scarlet jackets, or by scarlet gowns. 
 
 Nota bene : It is a debt due to honour and justice for me 
 to state, that, though I was unable to countersign all the 
 doctrines of her letter, Mrs. Oronoko answered by return of 
 post my nephew's favour, and sternly reprobated the illibe- 
 ral and saucy airs assumed by him against a most useful, 
 benevolent, and enlightened profession : interdicting him, 
 
40 
 
 delicacy we approached the awful bed upon 
 which was extended the pauvre malade, pale, 
 thin, wrinkled by time, and emaciated with 
 sickness : yet, though I am any thing rather 
 than a disciple of Lavater, I thought there was 
 discoverable beneath this frightful mask of the 
 Parcse a mental illumination, and a speaking- 
 character of sagacity, and that, in a word, wit 
 and wisdom, as Churchill admirably expresses 
 
 it, 
 
 Sat couch'd beneath the pent-house of his eye : 
 
 PROPHECY OF FAMINE. 
 
 But I jump over, with the assent and applause 
 
 at the same time, under a penalty of losing her favour and 
 his next Michaelmas remittance, [she having a carte blanche 
 of authority over my funded and other property,] from read- 
 ing, for the time to come, the plays of Moliere j whose an- 
 timedical prejudices are so many sprigs of withered night- 
 shade [to adopt her own blue-stocking metaphor] in the 
 bay-wreath that encircles his temples, fc^r 3 Upon ogling, 
 by a clandestine peep over the shoulder, the words of her 
 postscript, I found her borrowing a hint from Sir Christopher 
 Wren's monumental '' Circumspice" in St. Paul's Cathedral; 
 and desiring the sarcastic and bantering Charles to look around 
 the University, in which he was resident, for the best refu- 
 tation of his idle babble against the medical profession. In 
 this part I saw very distinctly the names of WALL, BOURNE, 
 WILLIAMS, KIDD, GEOSVENOR, TUCKWELL, HITCHINGS, 
 c. &c. In thisjinale I fully acquiesced,- and it accordingly 
 was honoured by my sign manual and seal of approbation, 
 
41 
 
 of the enchantresses around you f , those icicles 
 
 f Though, as I well know, you are the prince Prettyman 
 of favourites, a second petted Richardson in the circle of 
 literary ladies, and a sort of Julium sidus, around whom the 
 slellcB minores of the other sex revolve in graceful homage ; 
 yet, forgive me, if, for the sake of the uninitiated in the 
 mysteries of this amiable intercourse, I give you the deriva- 
 tion of Bas Bleu, as it has been communicated to us by one 
 of the most amiable and certainly the most learned of the 
 whole sisterhood ,- though, (by the way) I have infinite re- 
 spect for the mental endowments of that " petticoated 
 Semivir," Madame de Stael : e< Dress was so little re- 
 garded in our circles, that a foreign gentleman who was 
 to go there with an acquaintance was told in jest that it 
 was so little necessary, that he might appear there, if he 
 pleased, in blue stockings. This he understood in the literal 
 sense, and when he spoke of it in French, called it the Bas 
 Bleu meeting. And this was the origin of the ludicrous 
 appellation of the Blue stocking Club, since given to those 
 meetings." ' Memoirs of Mrs. E* Carter, vol. i. p. 466. 
 
 C3* When I read this note to Mrs. and Miss Oronoko, [in 
 obedience to the imperative nod of my wife,] and had arrived 
 at the words Julium sidus, &c. the latter giggled in derision; 
 while the former set up a shrill and inexpressibly contemptu- 
 ous whevi ! and then rudely added "Julium sidus, in- 
 deed ; marry come up ! rather call him a Sporus, or Lord 
 Fanny, or better still, a thistle in a nosegay of roses." You 
 will be pleased however to hear that I rebuked my daughter's 
 flippancy and sent her out of the room in a bouncing pet : 
 I carried this point in spite of Mama's interference in her 
 behalf; and had courage enough for once to hum a tune 
 with a sort of pick-tooth indifference, as she muttered, not 
 loudly but deeply, the words " wretch" " cruel" " mon- 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 of ceremony which were melted away only by 
 slow and gradual degrees, before he was chafed 
 into that wild flame of affection and of confi- 
 dence, which ultimately grasped me by the hand, 
 and eloquently expressed a desire that we should 
 be left together in discussion : Boniface was ac- 
 cordingly compelled to withdraw, though he did 
 so with reluctance, and cast a lingering look 
 behind ; for landlords, like the ladies, are pos- 
 sessed of a most laudable curiosity after whis- 
 pered secrets, and are swallowed up by a 
 " greedy ear," like Desdemona, when listening 
 to the witching and warrior graces of Othello. 
 By a sort of supernatural effort my hero erected 
 his head high upon the pillow magisterially 
 waved his hand for the bolting of the door, and 
 in a hollow and sepulchral voice, though with 
 a tenderness in the cadence of its tones, that 
 bespoke a lively satisfaction for the eagerness 
 of attention which I manifested, thus addressed 
 me : " I could find it in my heart," quoth he, 
 " to pour out unto you all the chequered varieties 
 of my life, for you would find them neither 
 
 ster" "mutineer," &c. But alas ! the nox mtempesta, o> 
 curtain lecture> is yet to come ! Was the Mantuan never mar- 
 ried, or is his " intempesta SILET nox" (Georg. lib. i.) a 
 stroke of polished irony ? 
 
43 
 
 ordinary nor unedifying, but alas! I feel that 
 the tide of life is ebbing fast away, and my 
 decaying strength will allow me to commit 
 nicate no more than the narrative of that event 
 which has brought me to this bed of thorns ; 
 together with a secret that has long been folded 
 up in the silent recesses of my heart, but which 
 now throbs for utterance and disclosure beyond 
 all further power of mental resistance. For 
 many years it has been the unvaried habit of 
 my life to indulge in a little sea-bathing a 
 luxury, which, like second courses at dinner, 
 if not necessary is yet agreeable: but upon my 
 arrival at the coach-office in town to secure a 
 seat in the Southampton mail, 1 found to my 
 utter confusion that every place had been pre- 
 viously engaged. As Iwas brooding over my 
 disappointment, and muttering " curses not 
 loud but deep," a gentleman dropped in upon a 
 similar errand, and a similar vexation of course 
 ensued. Misfortune, like necessity, is the mo- 
 ther of expedients : his eye met mine, and said 
 or seemed to say " Despite upon these lum- 
 bering stages they may serve for the accom- 
 modation of gregarious Plebeians, who jostle 
 and jam themselves within like figs in adhesion, 
 or oysters in the barrel ; but let us two powder 
 
 G 2 
 
44 
 
 along, like patricians, in a chaise, and emulate 
 the speed of the mail, when frothed with intelli- 
 gence from Waterloo." 
 
 Nee mom, sed dicto citius ; we were already 
 on the road, and during the first stage my new 
 acquaintance carried my heart by a coup de 
 main. A more fascinating gossip or a tete-a- 
 tete magazine, more irresistible in its attractions, 
 never rattled over the stones nor exhilarated 
 the festivities of the bottle. Never was there 
 poured forth an epanchement de coeur more open 
 and unsophisticated than that which animated 
 and fed the commencement of our journey. 
 His genius seemed to have been purposely 
 formed and fitted by Nature to brush away the 
 cobwebs from the brow of care. He had every 
 possible variety of conversational small-change 
 in the pockets of his mind. His spirits were 
 as bounding, and elastic, and eddying as a 
 cork in a mill-stream. His laugh was the laugh of 
 the heart; so genuine, so jolly, so impetuous, 
 so echoing, that it must have alarmed the ghost 
 of Lord Chesterfield ! No moroseness, no cho- 
 ler, no captiousness, no bile eclipsed, even 
 casually, and for a moment, the unclouded 
 " sunshine of his breast *." His tongue " drop- 
 
 E ''Theirs is the sunshine of the breast." GRAY, 
 
 * 
 
45 
 
 ped manna" sparkled without intermission, 
 and passed in rapid and playful succession 
 " from grave to gay, from lively to severe," and 
 in his colloquial character, at least, this enchant- 
 ing rattle seemed the counterpart of Dryden's 
 Zimri, and was " every thing by turns and 
 nothing long." So far the adventure was ft 
 jubilee of delight, we sojourned just as 
 amicably as ham and chickens go together we 
 were chips of the same block Mercuries of 
 the same wood, and twin-cherries upon th 
 same stock 
 
 But human pleasure, what art thou, in truth? 
 The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below ! 
 
 T. CAMPBELL. 
 
 Full soon our friendship was shattered in the 
 dust, and felt its death-blow. I had been ac- 
 customed, (and time had ripened the habit into 
 an absolute necessary of life,) to smoke my pipe 
 at a certain hour of the day, and for an inveterate 
 complaint I swallowed in brisk succession 
 sundry pills richly compounded of asafcetida 
 and garlic. The round, oily, wedding counte- 
 nance of my companion was immediately 
 attenuated to a funereal length, and assumed a 
 boding scoul. Without the slightest disguise he 
 twisted, by incessant jirks, his whole bodj^away 
 
46 
 
 from my elbow screwed and nestled himself 
 up in his own corner of the chaise, and at length 
 pulled out the peg from his fermenting spleen, 
 and loudly expostulated against the sczva me- 
 phitis of my nostrums and the insupportable 
 horror of my tobacco fumes. I strove at first 
 to assuage his choleric disgust by gentle ano- 
 dynes. 1 told him that a pipe had been called 
 by a dragon of wisdom, the " purifying alembic 
 of the brains" that it would clarify and brighten 
 my wit that the precept " ex fumo dare lucem* 
 was strickly Horatian, and that my regimen 
 accordingly had the sanction of the Augustan 
 age, and was not to be found in Quintilian's 
 proscribed list of " ineruditce voluptates" though 
 it might, very possibly, be reprobated by the 
 effeminate fastidiousness and dancing-master 
 graces of a Stanhope. I added that it would 
 unwrinkle the brow of care and " spread a heal- 
 ing 11 mist before the mind." I informed him in 
 
 * If I do not much mistake, I have met with these words 
 so applied, in the Monthly Review ; but my memory, which 
 is a perfect sieve, refuses just at present to supply me with 
 the volume and place where they reside. 
 
 h Oh ! ever gracious to perplex mankind, 
 And spread a healing mist before the mind. 
 
 POPE'S DUNCIAD. 
 
a tornado of impassioned eloquence, that I had 
 once upon a time enjoyed the hyper-superlative 
 distinction of dining in company with that giant 
 of intellect DOCTOR PARR, whose enthusiasm 
 for this lenitive was familiar to all Greece that 
 within twenty minutes after the cloth had been 
 removed, he converted the dining room into the 
 den of Cacus 
 
 . . . . ingentera fumum, [mirabile dictu,] 
 Evomit, involvitque domum caligine caecS, 
 Prospectum eripiens oculis .... 
 
 ^EN. viii. 251. 
 
 that no Sabaean odours, however, no fogs of 
 perfumed sweets, hovering over the harems of 
 Mahometan sensuality, were ever more fragrant 
 and refreshing that, accordingly, not one mur- 
 mur escaped the lip ; but that, au contraire, each 
 man present considered and chronicled the day, 
 with all its accompaniments, as a fairy-boon of 
 honour and of compliment, and as forming an in- 
 defectible epoch in the red-lettered calendar of 
 his life ! But it was all in vain ; his anger only 
 thickened upon me, and I then in the fever of 
 my indignant blood assumed another and a 
 haughtier tone I told him that a partnership in 
 a chaise was taken like a partner for life, for 
 better for worse, and reminded him with a vie- 
 
48 
 
 torious snap of a finger and thumb, that the 
 vehicle was paid for to the end of the journey ! 
 For a while he appeared pacified and silent, and 
 I hugged myself in the fond hope that I had ef- 
 fectually thrown a cooling- draught upon all his 
 animosities ; but in a short time I observed, with 
 unspeakable surprize, a wild and vivid stare 
 about his eyes, and a singularity in his whole 
 manner, that induced me to intimate, in the 
 softest piano of my voice, a suspicion with re- 
 spect to the soundness of his health : but he 
 bade me subdue my alarm ; true it was, he said, 
 that a few weeks ago he had been bitten by a 
 dog that was outrageously mad that in obe- 
 dience to the mandate of the Physician of the 
 Lunatic Asylum, he was now on his way to 
 Southampton to be dipped, but that I need not 
 apprehend the most distant danger of attack or 
 seizure from him until he began to bark and 
 snarl. At this moment we turned a sharp angle 
 of the road, and a large pool of water in a 
 neighbouring field came full upon our view : 
 my companion immediately curled his body 
 into the most frightful distortions his hair was 
 " elfed with knots k " he set up a hideous mas- 
 
 * " Elf all thy hair with knots." K. LEAR,, act i. 
 
49 
 
 tiff growl, and ground and champed his teeth 
 together, while his red and fiery eyes flashed 
 and rolled to the fullest extent of their orbicular 
 dimensions. This was enough to quail the 
 stoutest heart; 1 felt the flesh creep upon my 
 bones, and was panic stricken from head to 
 foot. With lightning's speed I burst open the 
 door of the chaise I jumped out, and desired 
 the post-boy to hasten onwards without caring 
 for me '. 
 
 My pseudo-maniacal friend tossed my port- 
 manteau after me; and as I was floundering 
 through the mud into which I had been deeply 
 embedded by my precipitate escape, I observed 
 him laughing a gorge deploy ee, and waving his 
 hat in derision from the window of the chaise ; 
 and then, as if to convince me that every symp- 
 
 1 1 recollect to have picked up in conversation, many years 
 ago, some traditional record of this strange adventure j-r-but 
 as it was then told, it had no association whatever with the 
 name and pretensions of Julius, and was disfigured, as is 
 usual in such cases, by an infusion of much error and mis- 
 representation. It having been, howeve^ my singular fate 
 and exclusive good fortune 
 
 INTEGROS accedere FONTES 
 
 Atque HAURIRE LUC RET. 
 
 so is it now my boast and my ambition to pour out upon a 
 thirsty land, the waters, pure and unpolluted as I received 
 them, from the fountain-head. 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 torn of hydrophobia had subsided, I saw him 
 apply to his lips and swallow in copious liba- 
 tions an excellent bottle of negus which we had 
 agreed to enjoy in partnership, as the playfellow 
 of our journey and the whetstone of our wit m . 
 Ludicrous as this adventure may seem con- 
 tinued the invalid -it has been to me the arrow 
 of death : I was benighted on the road, and the 
 fatigues incurred by struggling to this friendly 
 house brought on a violent cold and a lingering 
 fever, which have baffled all the left-handed 
 skill of those hardy weeds of society, called the 
 Doctors, and at this moment are fast drawing 
 around me the curtains of a long night. But 
 now, Sir, for the mystery which I promised to 
 develope: my waning strength will admit of no 
 detail or circumlocution, but I beseech you to 
 believe my round, unvarnished declaration, that 
 you now see before you him who has so long 
 
 ""This biter- bit adventure of my outwitted hero forcibly 
 reminds me of an ingenious friend, who, having determined 
 to be a match for the pick-pockets, bought a mouse-trap, 
 and in the Box-lobby of Drury Lane deposited it, ready 
 cocked and primed, and with the nicest delicacy, upon the 
 surface of his new and extra-superfine cambric handkerchief: 
 but, as great wits have short memories,, the first rogues he 
 caught were his own fingers. 
 
51 
 
 played at hide and seek with a vainly inquisitive 
 world the Author of JUNIUS; and my name, 
 added he, with the sweetest and most touching 
 simplicity, is SUETT THE COMEDIAN !" Ob- 
 stupui ! steteruntque comae ! Epimenides, when 
 awakened from his long dream, was but a faint 
 representation of myself at this moment ! Speech- 
 less and spell-bound and transfixed to the spot 
 witli all the agony of amazement, I was the 
 counterpart of obdurate Dido in her subterra- 
 nean conference with JEneas. I was mute as a 
 knotted oak, and immoveable as a Marpesian 
 rock. " Yes," continued he, as he emphatically 
 grasped me with his right hand, and the damps 
 of death had almost chilled it to a petrefaction 
 " I AM that meteor of the last generation that 
 has gathered so much renown, and these docu- 
 ments will fix and seal your hesitating faith, 
 many pangs and compunctious visitings have 
 1 felt for all the sinful glories and scalding elo- 
 quence of my youthful pen for having (insigni- 
 ficant as I am, and like a hornet's tail in the 
 nose of a giant,) screwed down and buried in 
 infamy some of the best and loftiest characters 
 of the age that has passed away ; but in my 
 latter years I have striven, in the best manner I 
 was able, to drop some few opiates upon this 
 
 H2 
 
52 
 
 bosom-war of conscience to amuse, in my cha- 
 racter of Comedian, the sons and daughters of 
 those whom I have mangled on the rack of sa- 
 tire, to patch up a sort of posthumous armistice 
 with them, and to shake, by fits of laughter, all 
 resentment from their breasts, with the farcical 
 frolics of my Dickey Gossip." Here he sud- 
 denly paused, for the energy with which he 
 spoke had overpowered his feeble frame, and 
 soon afterwards, in spite of all my nursing care, 
 he swooned away into the arms of death I then 
 examined with breathless impatience the docu- 
 ments he had put into my hands : they were 
 fragments in his own hand-writing of those 
 matchless Letters, and having compared them 
 before dinner", and through three or four differ- 
 ent pair of spectacles, with the autographs pub- 
 lished in Wood fall's last edition, I have not the 
 faintest scruple in announcing to the world, that 
 the fruit of this comparison was a perfect con- 
 viction, that JUNIUS and SUETT were alter et 
 idem ; for if there is a difference in their respec- 
 tive autographies, the Fairies alone can see it. 
 From this Delphic decision I cannot imagine 
 that the public (notwithstanding the heat and 
 
 n In conformity to the Horatian Canon , " impransi disqui- 
 rite !" Sat. ii. 2. 7. 
 
53 
 
 stir of the controversy, which is still at its height, 
 and in Babel confusion) will be bold enough to 
 dissent ; but if so, the fragments are in my pos- 
 session, and the sceptical may examine them at 
 their leisure. I have framed them in congenial 
 wormwood, with mouldings of polished brass; 
 and cherishing, as every man is bound to do in 
 this age of Bibliomaniacs, a jealous regard to 
 the literary honours of my children's children, 
 I have bequeathed them directly as an heirloom 
 to the Oronoko family for ever, but contingently, 
 and in default of issue male at the thirty- third 
 generation, to the Archives of the British Mu- 
 seum ; accompanied by a liberal salary to four 
 trustees, whose exclusive duty shall be to wage 
 in that quarter a bellum inteniecinum against the 
 predatory incursions of worms, moths, and other 
 literary vermin, and there to preserve with an 
 eye of unwinking vigilance, and beneath the 
 custody of twelve patent padlocks, this peer- 
 less and invaluable deposit to the end of time ! 
 And, dearest Tom, could I encourage a hope 
 that my voice were strong enough to call forth 
 distant echoes, I would utter a wish that 
 THESE TWO LETTERS might also, like peri- 
 winkles clinging to the keel of a man of war, 
 accompany the documents in question might 
 
54 
 
 become a xr^a e$ , (or heir-loom for posterity,) 
 and 
 
 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale, 
 
 POPE. 
 
 which will waft the name of SUETT into the 
 haven o"f immortality. Yet, whilst I emulate 
 the ambition of the GREAT HISTORIAN whose 
 words I have quoted, in his ingenuous desire 
 of posthumous renown, I am not capable, any 
 more than he was, of dissembling my fears lest 
 these my labours should be disrelished by the 
 reader, and blackballed from the roll of Fame : 
 and, as it happens, not a little whimsically, my 
 fears are grounded on the very same basis with 
 his own ; 
 
 ev axgoao-iv ro> TO MH MT0HAE^ AYTfiN 
 foweiTeu. THUCYD. Hist. lib. i. c. 22. 
 
 Ever, my dear Couzin, 
 most affectionately and entirely yours, 
 
 CE. O. 
 
 BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD. 
 
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 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
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 OVERDUE. 
 
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 MAR 29 1943 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY